The Silver Bird
by James Jago
Summary: "My name is Dave. I'm a pilot, Will Parry is the son of one of my oldest friends, and I'm the only Airwolf fan in the world -so far as I know- to travel to an alternate dimension." Diehard fans will hate this story, but I like to think it's... different.
1. Prologue

What would you do if the girl you loved was separated from you by the greatest gulf imaginable... if she was from another universe? Well, if you were William Parry, you'd probably try and figure out a way of getting back to her. And, if your friend was a quantum physicist specialising in parallel universes, you would probably pull it off.  
  
Author's note: This is not the most believable story in this category. It was written for fun over the Easter holidays, and it helps if you don't take it too seriously; it doesn't take ITSELF too seriously. Reunion stuff is hardly original, but I hope this is a slightly different slant on it. Now, enough babbling from me, and on with the prologue!  
It had been a successful lecture, and one that was the subject of controversy in the student union for weeks to come.  
"It all sounds kind of Asimov to me," said one undergrad to a friend. "I mean, interdimensional microfissures, EM wavelengths, exotic dark matter cross-contamination." //If Mary had included half of what she knew about that last,// the dark-haired young man sitting at the next table along thought to himself, //he'd be asking her who her dealer was, and could he try some of whatever she was on!// He and his companion, a young woman with blonde hair cut in the same military fashion, exchanged amused glances as the student carried on merrily. He shut up rather hastily as Dr Malone herself entered the bar, bought a beer, and sat down at the table shared by the two companions.  
"They don't believe it, huh?" she enquired. The student who had been rubbishing her 'theories' flushed, and he finished his drink and retreated. Dr Malone laughed, and downed a third of her beer in one go. "D'you think we ought to show him this?" She produced a photograph from her pocket. It showed five people in aircraft flight gear, standing in front of a large aeroplane that resembled a Catalina flying boat with jet engines. All three of them were visible, though it had clearly been taken several years before. Dr Malone's hair was still black, and the other two were only just into their teens. The other two, a burly man in his forties with an embryonic moustache and a woman resembling the young man, were otherwise occupied at the moment. A small, dark grey cat and a pine marten were also visible in the picture.  
Flight Lieutenant William Parry grinned, remembering the day that photograph had been taken. They had all been smiling broadly and genuinely; the previous photograph on the film had been of Mary's back, and after ten minutes of wrestling with the camera's timer she had got somebody else to take the picture for them.  
He turned the picture over, and looked at the fabric patch taped to the back. It was circular, and portayed an aircraft- the aircraft they had been photographed behind- flying from the bottom left to top right quarter, against a background of a fair representation of the Northern Lights. Sewn into the border were five sets of initials: EP, MM, WP, DS and LS.  
"I haven't spoken to Dave or your mother for a while, Will," Mary said. "How're they getting on?"  
"Last I heard, Mum got him to take the Aurora to some sparsely inhabited little world for a while, swearing blind she'd have got him to quit smoking by the time they got back," Flight Lt 'Elisabeth Parry' laughed as her husband explained. One could not help but admire her mother-in-law's determination.  
"Dave says he's going to put all of what happened down in writing," Will continued. "The first test jump, the fight against the Magisterium, that business with the Spectres; all of it. He wants to put it on the Internet."  
"Who'd believe it?" Mary wondered.  
There was of course only one way to answer that question. This is the result. 


	2. Love, loss and the promise of reunion

Disclaimer: The only character I own is Dave. Further OCs may appear later. The aircraft design is also mine, and mine alone.  
  
I wrote this primarily for fun over the Easter break. I know how implausible it is, but so what?  
  
The Silver Bird  
Or:  
Some Stuff They Don't Want You to Know About  
  
I imagine that it'll be twenty years before they ever let this get published, so I posted it here so my voice would be heard. Name's Dave Marshall, by the way.  
The events leading up to my eventual involvement in inter-dimensional warfare, and crashing an aircraft into the nicest kebab house in Northampton, are documented in a series of excellent books whose source of information I am not at liberty to disclose (because I haven't a clue what they are). They got it dead-on, mostly, but there were quite a few loose ends left. Fate abhors loose ends...  
  
I only got involved in all this because of a chance encounter with Jonathan Parry on a bleak moor somewhere in the Falklands, where I'd ended up after I was shot down by a lucky shot from a Mirage fighter towards the end of the campaign. You would rapidly become friends with the group of men who have personally trekked about forty miles through two days and nights of unending rain to rescue you, I'll bet.  
The upshot of this was that I was deputised by an informal committee of John's friends and former colleagues to look after Will, God knows why, whilst his mother received care and treatment. He and Dr Malone filled me in on what happened. I only half-believed it at the time, to be honest. Fortunately, so did most of the government, and as far as they were concerned the matter was closed- an attitude they were later to regret.  
We resume direct narration some eight weeks after the climax of events. It was a dull evening, and Will was slumped in front of the television. I was in the kitchen, attempting to fit a new strip-light, and drill noises and cries of "oh, dear," or words to that effect could be heard filtering through the door. This did little to alleviate the gloom Will had been sunk in since he had sealed the portal.  
It seemed wretchedly appropriate that Sliders was on two channels. Will switched off the TV, and decided to abandon the evening and go to bed when a thought struck him. Mary had sent a package this morning, but he hadn't had time to open it before school and had forgotten it until now. He found it on the table by the front door of my small riverside flat, a repository for keys, loose change and junk mail I hadn't got around to throwing away.  
It contained a thick document and a note: Thought you might be interested in this. He hastily turned over the bundle of papers. It was a research proposal, entitled Inter-Dimensional Microfissures: Their Properties and Exploitability for Travel between Parallel Universes.  
Will's joyful whoop could be heard all over the building, but it was cup final night so nobody said anything.  
  
The next fortnight is a bit of a blur, really. Will practically lived in Mary's lab, after badgering me into filling out a permission-to-be-absent form for his school. It was quite a work of fiction, I can tell you! I was quite surprised when they called me at the office of the small aviation firm I work for a month later, and somehow talked my boss into patching them through to the radio of the plane I was in.  
I was on the return leg of a test run of our most recent acquisition, a third-hand Grumman turboprop passenger/freight carrier. It had gone smoothly, but I was still concentrating rather hard on looking out for something going horribly wrong.  
"Hello?" I said rather hesitantly.  
"We've done it, Dave! We've figured out a way to travel between universes!" Will half-yelled. I winced, and dialled down the volume of my headset. Mary came on at this point, and rather more calmly described something of the physics.  
"A powerful enough beam of EM radiation on a gradually broadening waveband will force a fissure open far enough to admit a vehicle, probably an aircraft, then close behind it with no contamination," she explained.  
"What contamination?"  
"Exotic dark matter from the other universe; from both, in fact. It's something to do with the Law of Conservation of Energy." I didn't wholly understand this bit; it sounded like something to do with lightbulb wattage or something, but anyhow.  
"So," I asked, "where do I come into all this? I assume you're calling now because it's urgent."  
"I mentioned an aircraft. How many other pilots do I know?" Aha.  
She rang off, and was replaced by the voice of my boss. "What was that all about, then?" I was relieved to realise that he hadn't been listening in; I'd never hear the end of it if he knew the content of that conversation.  
"I'll explain when I get back on the ground," I replied. "ETA about two hours from now." I told him an edited version, carefully skipping over such details as Will travelling between universes by another means, and concluded with the explanation that they needed a pilot for a specific part of the research.  
"Well," he replied, "if you want to travel to an alternate dimension you can do it in your time off- and you've got six months of it piled up- unless this Malone woman meets our fees."  
"God, Frank, you're a mercenary bugger sometimes!" I laughed. "I'm going to do this off my own bat, and for free, for two reasons. Firstly because this research is founded upon data which one of my closest friends died to obtain, and secondly because I'll get more fame and money this way."  
  
After some cautious experimentation, we figured that the baseline minimum speed for us to successfully pull this off was about Mach 2. I reckoned a safety margin of 0.3 would be advisable; having the portal close on us and cut the plane in half was NOT something I fancied trying out. So we needed an aircraft that could exceed twice the speed of sound, land on any terrain, and accommodate the three of us as well as a fair number of scientific instruments.  
We split this Herculean task into two elements; drive system and vehicle. Mary handled refining the technology of what we christened the Malone Drive (patent pending), whilst I was put in charge of designing the aircraft itself.  
The design approach I adopted was as unconventional as the mission we were undertaking. The most flexible fixed-wing aircraft I could think of was a flying boat, and I dug up everything I could on them. I was actually quite surprised to learn that jet-engined amphibious aircraft weren't totally novel; The US Navy experimented with the Sea Master transport and even a fighter, the Sea Dart, but aircraft carriers made them redundant and their full potential was never realised. One Sea Master prototype was preserved in a museum, and I managed to talk to one of the test pilots. I learned valuable lessons about the theory and practice of combining aviation with seamanship, and incorporated many of the Sea Master's better design features into my own work.  
I also had access to a remarkable hull material; the manganese/titanium alloy that had been used in the manufacture of the Knife. It proved to be lighter than aluminium, though slightly heavier than titanium alone on a gram-for-gram basis, and unbelievably resilient. The hull wasn't much more than a millimetres-thick skin, yet it would withstand anything up to 30mm cannon fire. We sold it for a favourable sum to Corus, and found ourselves with enough money to set up the whole expedition.  
"Let's just hope the Army don't start making bayonets out of it," Will remarked at the time. We never figured out how to create a monomolecular edge to the material, but it was a bit worrying.  
Early on we decided that both the aircraft and we should be armed. At least one universe's government didn't like the idea of travelling between dimensions, and were unlikely to regard us as peaceful explorers. 'Walk softly but carry a big stick,' as the old saying goes. Partly for diplomatic reasons, partly for the sake of aerodynamics, every weapon was retractable or otherwise hidden. Our armaments included six missile pylons (we settled on four Sidewinders and a pair of Sea Eagles) a pod of 40mm antitank rockets with helmet guided sighting, and no fewer than ten M134 miniguns split between the nose and three turrets. I also added a full countermeasure suite; chaff, flares and ECM. I sincerely hoped we wouldn't need any of this stuff, but it looked impressive. Given the trouble I had getting hold of it I should hope so, anyway!  
  
When it was completed, the aircraft looked like a hybrid. Her high wings and boat-like keel resembled that of a Catalina, whilst the lack of floats and single Rolls-Royce turbine on each wing could have been from a jet airliner. She was about sixty feet long, with a forty-foot wingspan, and her lines were far from graceful. She'd do the job, though. The hull contained living quarters for four people, a vast store of spare parts, and a large amount of data gathering and recording equipment. I'd even squeezed a Zodiac inflatable onboard.  
"So, what do you reckon we should call her?" I asked as we supervised the last components being installed. "It's like with ships. Bad luck to sail her without giving her a name," I elaborated in response to the blank looks I was getting.  
"I reckon we all ought to have some input," said Will.  
  
Mrs Parry had insisted upon going along, she told us, because of a conflict of interest. "John would have liked him coming with you," she explained, "but there is no way I'm letting that boy out of my sight for a minute!" We needed an extra hand, and we didn't dare risk bringing any outsiders to the scheme, so despite everybody's misgivings she was invited to train with us. She picked up the skills needed phenomenally fast, and it actually speeded her recovery for her to feel she was doing something to help achieve some kind of closure about her husband. My efforts at glossing over the issue of weaponry, particularly regarding Will, came to nothing when she rather firmly insisted that he be given the knowledge and means to defend himself. Will did nothing to alleviate the sense of total foolishness I felt by explaining that he'd been training with small arms in secret all along. None of us could help laughing at her expression.  
Once we got that little matter sorted out, training had proceeded apace over the next two years. We discussed the naming issue over one of our regular planning sessions, which were conducted over a meal in the restaurant/bar on Sywell airfield. We all drew a blank except for Mrs Parry herself.  
"How about the 'Aurora Borealis'?" she suggested. "It was what the scientists in John's party were researching when they stumbled on these portals, if I remember rightly."  
"I don't remember that from the letters," Will said, thoughtfully sipping his Coca Cola.  
"I heard it from him in the last phone call he made before he set off," she explained.  
"I like it," Mary remarked, "but isn't there already an aircraft called the Aurora?"  
"The US airforce swear blind it doesn't exist, and even if it does they probably call it something else," I replied. "Anyone got another idea?" Nobody did. "Motion carried, then." The next day, with solemn ceremony, we painted Aurora's new name on her hull.  
***  
  
The day of reckoning had arrived. We all carefully suited up, and kitted ourselves out with survival equipment, sidearms and a few personal mementoes and good luck charms. I always carried a piece of the fuselage of the Harrier I came down in all those years before; it had saved my life then when most planes would have killed me. The rest of it now forms part of the collection in the Falklands War museum in Port Stanley. Mary had a St Christopher medallion, Mrs Parry a photograph of her and John together. Will's was the hilt of the Knife, which now had a conventional blade of nothing more exotic than Toledo steel.  
Then, we all boarded our vehicle, which was parked in my firm's hangar on Sywell field. Frank had gone on holiday, leaving his secretary/girlfriend in charge, and she had let us use the hangar in his absence.   
Our cover story was that this was a prototype cargo aircraft, which our firm had been hired to flight test and evaluate prior to it being put into full production by a small manufacturer. We got a short article in an aviation magazine, but I was able to keep them out of the cockpit by explaining that until the manufacturers gave a press release everything about Aurora was commercially confidential. This was partly true; we planned to sell the design, somewhat modified, to an aircraft builder for that very purpose.  
  
I rolled the door open, taking care not to make excessive noise, and let Mary gently taxi Aurora out into the predawn gloom. We went through our respective pre-flight checklists; me for flight controls and weapons, Will for radar, Mary and Mrs Parry for everything else. It was all green across the board, so I eased the throttles open and pulled the stick back, and lifted us from the short grass runway. I didn't even need to use the afterburners; whoever bought the design from us would make a fortune on it.  
We climbed to six thousand feet, and Mary got busy with the fissure targeting system. She still had the spyglass- it was part of her survival gear- but she'd worked out the chemical composition of whatever she'd coated it with. It's not that I don't know the story behind that, but I don't believe a word of it, OK? This substitute chemical, which was of poorer quality but sufficed, coated a small camera in the nose just above the Malone Drive. The monitor connected to it had a set of simple vinyl crosshairs on it, which allowed her to point us in the right direction.  
"Okay," she said through her respirator, "starboard three degrees. Up one degree... Got it! Go for approach." I put the throttles up to full, and cut in both afterburners. We needed a six mile run up to reach optimal jump speed, apologies to whoever we woke up that morning by the way, so Mary used a high magnification lens to orient on a fissure a suitable distance away.  
"Right," Mary said a little breathily as the G-force took effect, "activate jump system in 3...2...1... MARK!" I flipped the safety cover off the button on the control yoke and pressed it with only slight trepidation. Nothing happened for an instant but then, WHAM! I was thrown forward in my seat as an intense white light blazed through even the phototropic windshield and my tinted visor. It disappeared almost as soon as it arrived, and I was left dazzled for several seconds. I throttled back to cruising speed and kept us on what felt like an even keel whilst my eyes recovered.  
"Okey-dokey, valuable lesson learned there, everyone; a proper tinted windscreen rather than this fancy variable-tint one," I said shakily. "God, that was like having a flash-bang go off in the cockpit."  
My vision returned to near normal, and I took a look around. The land spread below us looked vastly different; there were more hedgerows dividing fields, like in an aerial photograph taken before farming metamorphosed into agribusiness. According to the inertial navigation system, which compared distance travelled with our last GPS reading, we should have been over a big housing development. There was none to be seen.  
"It worked," I said in incredulous delight. "We've travelled to an alternate dimension!" I looked around at the others, and was utterly astonished to see a cat sitting on Will's lap.  
"Where the HELL did that cat come from?" I exclaimed. Then, realisation dawned; it was a 'daemon', some sort of external projection of a person's consciousness or soul or whatever. Apparently you have to know exactly how and where to look to see your own, let alone other people's, in our world. I'd always figured this was a form of collective disbelief- if you disbelieve something exists hard enough you can't see it- but evidently it's a bit more complicated than that.  
The implications of this were not lost on Will. I guessed what he was thinking. "Stick your parachute on, then, lad. You'll find a box of Milk Tray in the cupboard," I joked, before turning serious. "Keep a close eye on radar, because if you're right about this Magi-thing we could get a rather chilly reception HEADS UP EVERYONE!"  
A prop-engined monoplane resembling a Spitfire shot across our nose. The others scrambled towards the gun turrets, then stopped as the fighter simply took up a station-keeping position on our left.  
"Looks like they're reserving judgement," I said thoughtfully. "If we start poking machine guns out at that bloke he might change his mind. See if you can work out what radio frequency he's on, Mary, and we'll have a go at talking to his superiors." An idea struck me, and I began flashing our wingtip navigation lights in Morse code: WHAT FREQUENCY ARE YOU USING? Before he could answer, Mary shouted that she had picked up radio traffic to and from the plane, and hastily patched it through to our headset earphones. We only caught the tail end of the conversation, but it was enough.  
"...permission to engage and destroy unknown aircraft, over." "Roger, wilco, out." Well, I thought grimly, we'd just have to see about that. I swung our nose over, and treated him to a quick burst. Four tongues of stabbing flame darted out at the fighter, perforating its tail fin and causing the pilot to heel over and evade. "Get to the gun turrets!" I roared, slapping the switch dropping the ventral and rear turrets into position and raising the dorsal guns.  
There was no need to look at the radar; this was air combat the old way, all eyes and instinct. The fighter came roaring over in for a frontal attack, guns rattling all the way. I fired off a quick burst, but our relative speeds were too fast for me to come close. Mary had little more luck in the dorsal guns, but Will sent twin rods of lead boring into the fighter as it passed us, blowing it sky high. If the thing wasn't a Spitfire, it had the extra fuel tank in exactly the same place behind the pilot's seat, by the look of things.  
"What the hell was the point in that?" I wondered aloud. I tuned my radio to the VHF frequency the fighter had been using. "Attention, whoever ordered that aircraft to attack us," I said icily. "We had no hostile intent and were forced to defend ourselves. An explanation for this unprovoked attack would be appreciated, and an apology even more so." Silence, broken only by the beeping of the hydraulics warning and the loud and creative swearing which followed.  
"Landing gear out, and we're leaking hydraulic fluid everywhere," I snarled. "I'm going to put us down on the Thames, in or near Oxford if possible, and once we've patched that leak we are going to find somebody in authority and get some answers, or by God I'm going to start strafing things!" The faultfinding system isolated the leak, and shut off the flow before we bled off the liquid that operated the steering and half a dozen other functions. Luckily, the only system still affected was the wheels, which restricted our choice of landing site but wasn't an abandon-aircraft scale problem.  
In due course, we arrived over Oxford. The river was wider than I remembered, and was accepting a lot of commercial traffic. It looked to have been dredged as well as widened, and most of the barges and other working boats had yet to depart at this hour. Landing was still going to be a memorable experience, however. I retracted the ventral turret and also the rear one, which hung low enough to not quite clear the waterline. Mary stayed where she was for the moment. I lined up very carefully, deployed the airbrakes, and dropped the nose.  
  
It was quite a dramatic landing by any standards, with Aurora skidding for several hundred yards and sluicing down all the barges on the waterfront, and our wings narrowly missing various dockside cranes, gantries and other tall stuff. I had a quiet cigarette before unbuckling my harness, which I needed. Events like this, just one of the hair-raising experiences I would endure in the near future, have done much to argue against giving up smoking.  
Once my hands had stopped shaking, I left my seat, removing my helmet, and went to the cabin door. It swung inwards, allowing me to keep a large chunk of metal between the outside world and myself. It's a minor detail, but I'm quite proud of the amount of thought that went into such things. I peered through the small window of bulletproof glass, and saw a number of soldiers assembled on the quay. Most had old-fashioned Enfield rifles, but two were setting up a machine gun on a bipod.  
I very cautiously opened the door a small crack, unbuckling the shoulder holster containing my pistol with one hand. "Listen," I called out to the soldiers, "we have no quarrel with you. I don't know what law or taboo we've broken, but whatever it is I'm really, really sorry." A bullet shattered the not-so-bulletproof window. Making a mental not to have a word with somebody about that, I drew my pistol and started firing. Mary retracted the dorsal turret- a tactical error; she could have mown down our adversaries in half a second- and ran for the cockpit, thinking to get us in the air before we were boarded. Mrs Parry appeared beside me, and joined in the fray. By luck, I'd managed to drop both the machine gunners before they could finish setting up, and for good measure I stuck a round into the gun itself, wrecking it. I was distantly aware that Will had got the other door open, and was about to give him a hand when the deck lurched. I caught a glimpse of a man dangling from the wing as I put out an arm to stop Will before he went staggering out of the door, but somehow Kirjava got under his feet and his back slammed into my chest, toppling us both in. Somehow we managed to drag Mrs Parry in as well.  
The door, which had no latching mechanism to keep it open, slammed shut. Thinking we were still onboard, Mary shoved open the throttles and took off. It was a beautiful takeoff, however I was too busy trying to swim through a vile mix of oil, domestic refuse and God knows what else whilst under fire to appreciate it.  
***  
I stayed under a convenient jetty for half an hour, waiting for the worst of the hue and cry to die down for a bit, then dragged myself out of the water. Will motioned me over to the old night watchman's hut he and his mother were taking refuge in.  
"Are you alright?" he asked. I gave him what I believe is called an old-fashioned look.  
"Alright, no. Alive; yes, just about," I replied. "You?" They both nodded. We took stock of ammunition- all our pistols were variations on a theme of nine millimetres- and divided it among ourselves. We then had a grand total of four magazines each.  
According to Will and Mrs Parry, who I finally managed to call Elaine, no great effort was being made to find us as we were assumed to have drowned. The current in the river, which had dragged me at least two hundred yards downstream, meant that the search for bodies was taking place outside the city for the moment. This gave us a very short breathing space in which to disappear before they realised we were at large. The biggest problem was the lack of daemons on Elaine's and my part.  
"I guess it's because you've been in our own world for a long time," Will suggested. "It's not instantaneous the first time even when you're still young. They'll turn up in a while, I imagine."  
"How long is 'a while' going to be?" I wondered gloomily. "Hours? Days? We'll stick out like a nun in a snowdrift until then, whenever the hell it is."  
"All the more reason not to hang about," Elaine suggested breezily. "Come on, boys, chop-chop!" She seemed to be enjoying this. Will and I shared a harassed look, and followed her as she strode purposefully towards no definite destination I could gather.  
  
Lyra sat up violently in bed. "What the-?" she mumbled sleepily. "Huh, weird dream." Everything was slightly jumbled in her memory, but there had been a brief image of something like a huge silver bird, and then... "Will." God, it had been two years, you'd think that she'd have learned to get on with her life by now. Pan glanced up, then curled back up without a word. Lyra abandoned the idea of sleep, and dragged on some clothes. Despite the promises she had made to herself about this, she found herself wondering what Will was doing now. //At six in the morning, if he's got any sense, he'll be asleep// she concluded totally incorrectly. It was midsummer's day, she recalled. Their anniversary. She wondered if he had forgotten about the promise they had both made. He hadn't, but was prevented from fulfilling it by simple practical reasons. 


	3. On the run in Oxford

"Take your disbelief and fire a shotgun at it."  
'Tebor' on my story on FP. Make what you will of this.  
  
At this precise moment, Will was running like hell, as were Elaine and myself. Some eagle-eyed bobby was blowing his whistle and running full pelt after us. Colleagues of his were joining the pursuit by the dozen. A revolver crashed, and chips of stone peppered my clothes. Oh, for enough breath to swear!  
We rounded a corner, slightly ahead of the pursuit, and ducked into an alleyway. It proved to be a dead end, but enough dustbins, boxes and other junk facilitated climbing over the wall before they caught up. We fetched up in a small walled enclosure; some part of the botanical gardens, by my reckoning. The gate proved to be padlocked on the outside, and the wall offered no footholds.  
"Oh, just bloody marvellous," Elaine groaned. "What are we going to do now?"  
"Wait until they give up," I replied, "and then kick in that gate and make a break for it." I stripped off my flight suit, revealing my old T-shirt and jeans, and bundled it under my arm. The others quickly followed suit. Then, to my alarm, the gate began to open.  
  
Lyra pocketed the key, and started in the direction of the bench when a hand clamped firmly over her mouth. "Please don't scream," a desperate voice implored her. "We won't hurt you, but you have to promise not to make a sound, or we're dead." Pan searched for something to attack, saw a cat-daemon nearby, and leapt. It dodged nimbly, hissing like a cobra, but pulled up short before attacking. "Just a minute..." it-or rather she-said in astonishment.  
"Let go of her, Dave, it's all right!" hissed another voice, a familiar one. Lyra blinked; surely it couldn't be...? Her elbow shot backwards, catching her assailant neatly in the crotch. Then she ran towards the boy leaning against the bench. "Will! Oh Will, I knew you'd find a way back, I just knew it!" Before either of them knew it, they were rolling over and over on the grass, kissing, laughing and crying each other's names.  
  
When I emerged from the foetal position, Will and Lyra were still locked in a passionate embrace, apparently oblivious to the presence of his mother. Elaine and I exchanged amused glances, and let them carry on for another few minutes. "Now that you've had a chance to catch up a bit," I said, totally deadpan, "can we think about getting out of here before the police realise what happened to us?" Too late! Two voices were approaching, one of them sounding suspiciously official.  
"Well, if these miscreants did climb over the wall, they couldn't get out again. The gate is kept locked. Only myself and my goddaughter are allowed in, you see." Oh, terrific. As if we weren't in enough trouble already, now we were trespassing as well! The gate opened once more, to reveal a distinguished-looking old man. He looked about him, and nodded solemnly to me. My expression promised dire consequences if he raised the alarm.  
"Good morning, Elisabeth," he said pleasantly. "Up with the lark for once, I see. You didn't happen to see any suspicious persons lurking about, perchance?"  
"No, sir," Lyra replied, prim and proper as a character from a Bronte novel. "There you have it, constable," the man replied. "Fair enough, sir. I'm sorry to have trespassed upon your time. Good day." The old man, who I gathered to be the master of Jordan College, returned to the garden.  
"I presume you are the travellers from another world," he said politely. "It is good to make your acquaintance."  
"And I yours, sir," I replied. "I apologise for the rather dramatic circumstances. I trust I didn't wake you when I landed our aircraft a short distance from here."  
"Oh, not at all, not at all!" he said. "I was already awake, and Lyra here could sleep through the Apocalypse. Tell me, how exactly do you facilitate travel between worlds?"  
"A wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum focused on a microfissure between worlds, gradually widening to force it open long enough for a fast aircraft to traverse the portal," Mrs Parry explained. "Our science expert hasn't perfected it yet, but it works pretty well. Cross-contamination is negligible, and it doesn't leave gaping holes lying about in the fabric of reality." He nodded, looking almost like he understood a word of what she'd just said.  
"Seeing as we've solved that particular problem," I put in as politely as I could, "I fail to fully comprehend the attitude shown to us thus far. What exactly have we done to annoy these people?"  
"It conflicts with the long-established view of there being only this universe and the kingdom of God," the Master explained (sounds very Doctor Who put like that, doesn't it?). "I don't imagine young Lyra's father helped matters by attempting a coup d'etat against Him." I'd heard about this. Well, as obvious as it was that Lord Asriel was nine-tenths bonkers, you could say this for him; he thought big. It's rather a shame he didn't get hold of something like the Malone Drive, or he might have pulled it off.  
"I don't suppose you'd have any theories about where our aircraft might have fetched up, I suppose?" I enquired hopefully. "Fascinating as the opportunity to explore a whole new parallel culture is, to remain longer puts both ourselves and anybody who aids us in a lot of danger." The old man regretfully shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't help you there," he replied. A thought seemed to strike him. "However, I think a mutual acquaintance of ours may have more luck..." Lyra already had the altheiometer out of the rather student-ish leather satchel she carried around with her. "Come on, come on," she said under her breath, twisting the dials. "Aha! Got it. She's in the Fens, not far from a gyptian town."  
"Right, then," said Elaine in a determined voice. "We'd better be getting out of here before the police come back. If we get a train as far as Norwich we ought to be able to link up with Mary inside of a day."  
"Yeah, let's go," I agreed. "I take it you would like to come along, Miss Silvertongue?"  
"It'd take a cavalry charge to stop me!" she replied. Who was I to argue with that?  
  
Catching a train proved rather more difficult than anticipated. Our survival money, in gold sovereigns, was identical to local currency; the problem was getting past the small battalion of police watching the station.  
We found ourselves by the line, in the lee of a signalbox, getting rained on. I perched on a heap of oil-smeared and evil-smelling old ballast, which had been used as a urinal by every tomcat in the district and at least one generation of signalmen, and considered our next move. Lyra and Will were chattering away happily, with the dismal weather having no obvious effect on them.  
//All right for some,// I concluded gloomily. I heard a train whistle, and noticed that an empty coaching-stock train was pulling up to the nearby signal. We looked at each other, and stood up. "Come on," I said urgently. We ran headlong towards the train, and I wrestled open one of the doors. We dragged ourselves aboard, Lyra grabbing a handful of Pan's fur and hauling him up just as the signal went green. Elaine rubbed her shin, wincing. "I hope this isn't going to be another one of your oh-so-clever ideas like VTOL for Aurora," she remarked, alluding to one of the more embarassing setbacks we had suffered. No vectored-thrust engine in existence could push us to the required speed, so I briefly attempted to adapt an existing design; a failure that cost some £400000 and six months of construction time in rectifying, as well as putting my life at some risk when testing it.  
I ignored this, and turned my attention to establishing precisely where we were headed. The destination board outside the window suggested that this stock would form a train from Northampton in the near future, and getting a train to Norwich from there ought to be a simple matter. Nobody would be looking out for us, because we could only have left Oxford via the railway station, right? Wrong! I felt rather proud of myself for this elegant solution to a formidable problem.  
"OI! What do you think you're playing at?" a nicotine-roughened voice demanded. We turned to behold a large man in the uniform of a railway guard. He was holding a heavy stick, and his Rottweiler-daemon was growling.  
"Look, we've got a terribly urgent appointment, you see," I protested feebly, digging in my pockets for cash. "What's the fare?" Money would be far better at arguing our case than words, I guessed. I was wrong; he lunged at me, stick raised. I dodged, and came back with a fast jab to his solar plexus. Elaine caught his arms, putting him in a painless but immovable hold; she'd trained in restraining violent people when working as a receptionist at a hospital. His daemon was left facing Will's pistol, and wisely surrendered.  
"Now," I said evenly, "I was willing to duly recompense the company for our passage, but you asaulted me and forced us to take action against you. You have only yourself to blame for this." We locked him them in the guard's compartment, and setled in for the journey. Soon, I percieved that we were in lowlying country. It had the flat, unbroken look of reclaimed marshlands.  
"This might be even simpler than I thought," I remarked to the others. "If this train stops near Norwich we ought to have an easy time of it from here."  
The train came to an abrupt halt a few seconds later. "Or perhaps not," Elaine said sarcastically. I declined to rise to this, and put my head out of a window to try and find out what had happened.  
An auto-train, a tank engine and set of carriages with a cab at one end, was blocking the line. Its crew shouted an explanation-locked continuous brakes- and continued scratching their heads over the problem. I stared at the little tank engine, which had a good head of steam built up. A slow smile spread across my face. Elaine read my thoughts. "Well," she conceeded reluctantly, "it beats walking, or sitting around until they sort this lot out."  
  
It was a beautifully executed smash-and-grab raid. I tackled the driver, Elaine sorted the fireman, and Will and Lyra uncoupled the locomotive from the coaches. I released the handbrake, shoved the reverser into full forward, and opened the regulator as soon as the others were aboard.  
The next few minutes are a blur of noise, steam and speed. We tore across the landscape, diverting onto a small branch line for no reason I could gather, until it came to an abrupt end. I can only feel grudging admiration for the quick-witted signalman who changed the points and sent us towards a disused and partly collapsed viaduct across an expanse of marshland. We maintained our horizontal travel for quite a long distance, and for a moment I thought we might jump the gap, but we bellyflopped noisily into the shallow water and mud with a gigantic SQUELCH!  
"Anyone else still alive?" I asked weakly. There was a chorus of groans, which was encouraging. Elaine's face appeared in my field of vision; her expression was less so. "This," she said coldly, "is the last time I EVER go along with one of your clever ideas."  
"You know what?" I replied, lighting a cigarette with hands that shook worse than ever, "This is the last time I go along with one, as well." I asisted Will in digging Kirjava out from beneath the contents of the coal bunker, which had burst open, and then clambered onto the roof in an effort to get my bearings. Helpfully, there appeared to be a canal, with a towpath in reasonable repair, not far from our position.  
  
We trudged damply to the towpath, and thought about our various options. We could follow the canal which would eventually lead somewhere, we could wait for a boat to pass and hitchhike, or we could strike out across open country. None of us felt like walking anywhere just yet, so we decided to give it at least an hour before we started off. I contemplated my last cigarette, but thought I'd better save it until later; there was no telling when I'd be able to get another packet.  
Elaine explained the principles of the Malone Drive to Lyra, who picked them up rapidly. "I don't think it creates Spectres," she said, "and if it does Mary's pretty sure she can use the Drive to kill them. The Dust can't get through, or such a miniscule amount does permeate it doesn't do any damage. At more than twice the speed of sound it hasn't got time."  
Lyra nodded. "Yeah, I figured that if a window was only open for an instant it wouldn't matter. The real danger's from osmotic action." Elaine looked at Will in a very un-maternal manner.  
"Brains as well as beauty," she said with laughter in her voice. "You've got good taste, boy!"  
"Aww, Mum!" said Will, suddenly the awkward teenager he ought to have been instead of the prematurely grown man he usually seemed. Lyra giggled as he turned a deep shade of red. I shrugged, and mouthed "Women!" in masculine solidarity.  
Before either female could frame a suitably scathing remark, the deep chugging of a marine diesel engine could be heard. A barge came into view, with a gangling lad of about eighteen at the helm. If he was surprised at seeing four people covered in mud and coal dust and with only two daemons between them, he gave no sign of it.  
"Need a lift?" he inquired jauntily, with what sounded like a Romany accent. Then he stopped, and stared. "Lyra? Blimey, what are you doing here? And who are this lot?"  
"Tony!" Lyra cried enthusiastically. "This is Will. Will, this is Tony Costa, an old friend." Will's eyes narrowed slightly. "Hold up there, kid," I murmered, carefully pitching my voice so that only he could hear. "Remember Leontes out of that Shakespeare play we saw on telly the other night? Look at what happened to him." Tony helped us aboard, grinning. "Ma's down below," he said. I'd better let her know we've got company."  
Mrs Costa was a formidable but benign-looking woman, like the sort of teacher even the psyhco kids are scared of but everybody gets on with the rest of the time. She fussed over us spectacularly, and filled us in on her relation to Lyra over mugs of steaming tea laced with whiskey. Will was reassured somewhat, especially when Tony said casually to him: "We've heard loads about you these last two years, it's nice to meet you at last. Lyra only mentions you about every other sentence!" He gave me a knowing look; evidently he'd gathered the gist of Will's and my exchange. I acknowledged him with a barely perceptible nod, and returned to the task of filling in our side of the story.  
"So I get roped into this because I'm a pilot," I explained. "I flew fighters for a while, but I went into civil aviation after I left the air force. I taught Mary to fly when we were gearing up for our first trial run."  
"Did you build the aeroplane as well?" Mrs Costa asked, rather impressed. "On paper," I replied. "Not with my own hands; I did do the interior, with a bit of help from Elaine."  
"Which translates as me sorting out all the things he screwed up," Elaine said laconically. I wonder if John had to put up with this kind of thing? Probably not, knowing John as I had; he never seemed to screw up anything.  
Suddenly, there was a hoarse cry of alarm from Tony. I looked around, and beheld a police launch. Its two occupants held rifles. "How the HELL did they find us?" Elaine said incredulously. "They ain't after you, they're after us!" Tony explained, opening a compartment under a seat. I stared at the array of submachine guns, pistols and grenades in fascinated horror. This was really, REALLY turning into a long day.  
"Sheesh!" said Will, unfazed. "You planning the Revolution, or what?"  
"As a matter of fact we are," he replied seriously, "only this wasn't part of the plan!"  
"Then we improvise," said Elaine, drawing her pistol.  
We came out on deck, guns raised. "Drop those rifles!" I yelled. "You can't kill all three of us before we kill you!" It was a risky move, and didn't pay off. A round pinged off the deck and gashed Will across the knee. Elaine and I fired back, causing the policemen to duck. Will swore vocally, clutching his leg with one hand and groping for his pistol with the other. It would be his left knee that got grazed! He could barely hold a biro with his right hand, let alone a gun, but it was the only hand not occupied in preventing him from bleeding everywhere. Lyra scooped up the fallen weapon in one hand and took aim. The recoil nearly broke her wrist, and the round headed in the direction of the far horizon.  
"No, hold it with both hands!" I instructed her. She complied, and fired again. This time, she caught one of the policemen square in the chest and pitched him to the deck. "That's more like it!" I said with a grin. "Now, the other one's... hellfire!" The other one's eagle-daemon was swooping towards us, claws outstretched.  
At moments like this you have to react on instinct. My gun aimed skywards, but without any conscious decision from my brain; it was all the special section of the upper spinal column, the one that tells you to jerk your hand back from a hot surface. I got one round off, and hit it square on. Flames sprayed out from the bird's back, and it vapourised before it hit the ground. It's owner toppled backwards into the water.  
"I know what I just saw," I said very, very slowly, "but don't ask me to believe it, OK?" 


	4. Dogfighting, hangovers and a cunning pla...

Before I continue, I'd like to thank everyone who has said nice things about my work thus far, and for pointing out a little recurring mistake (seeing as we're dealing in parallel universes here, I thought I could get away with the odd error so failed to re-read the books!). And no, Ceres Wunderkid, I don't give a f*** for convention!  
Once again, the only character belonging to me is Dave (and the sister he mentions in passing, but she doesn't actually appear in the story so I'm not going to fight you for her). The aircraft is definitely mine.  
Note: it's possible that the Fens and the Norfolk Broads are two different places, but hell, I only got a D in Geography.  
  
We made our way to the town without further mishap. Will's leg wound was little more than a bad cut, and he tried very hard to stop the womenfolk from fussing over him. I stayed on deck most of the time, chatting to Tony about boats.  
"My dad owns a boatyard; not proper working boats, mind, just fibreglass tubs for people to holiday in," I explained. "I used to try to help out at weekends. That's how I learned to swim!"  
"I can see as how that would be an advantage," Tony laughed. "You didn't join the family firm, then?"  
"Nah, too much damn paperwork. You want my sister for that," I replied. "She's a regular walking calculator; became a chartered accountant by the time she was nineteen, by God!" We rounded a bend in the river and beheld the town.  
It was built alongside a broad, the local term for a large expanse of open water that gives the region its name. There were a few houses and shops, a meeting hall and a cluster of jettys, surrounded by boats. I was extremely relieved to see Aurora's gleaming hull riding the slight swell a little further out. Tony found a space to tie up in only a bit less time than it takes to find a parking space in London, and we disembarked. Mary was waiting with a tall, broad man who had an indefinable air of being IN CHARGE. He was introduced as Lord Faa.  
"You the boss of this lot, then?" I enquired.  
"Well, they always seem to expect me to know how to sort out everything. I suppose that's a definition of leadership," he replied. I grinned. "Practically THE definition of leadership, I reckon. You're gathering an impressive collection of weapons," I remarked. "This Magi-whatever must have really got your backs up, hmm?"  
"You can't imagine," he growled. I believed him on that count; the horror stories I'd heard secondhand made my own experiences seem kind of tame.  
"You're planning a revolt?" He nodded. "Want some air support?"  
"You sure about this?" said Elaine, rather worried. "If you don't want to join in, that's fine," I replied. "But I for one am just a little riled about being shot at, dunked in the Thames and shot at a couple more times a bit later before we've even been here a day!"  
"They've already tried to kill both of us," said Will. "I'm in!" Lyra nodded agreement.  
"You can count me in!" Mary piped up, her bird-daemon settling on her shoulder. Elaine shrugged. "Well, the law of averages says Dave's got to have a good idea once in a while," she admitted. "Mary's the brains of the outfit, and if she reckons it's a good idea..."  
Further comments were forestalled by a shouted warning, and a burst of gunfire. "What the hell-?" I drew my pistol and spun, seeing a large boat approaching. There was a big heavy machine gun on the prow, and it was strafing the waterfront. Gyptians with rifles, submachine guns or whatever else was handy were returning the fire. I got two wild snapshots off, but realised that it was useless.  
"Come on, we have to get to Aurora!" Mary shouted over the gunfire. I nodded, and untied a punt from a nearby jetty. The others scrambled in behind me, and Lyra grabbed the pole. She handled it fairly well, and evidently she'd done this more times than me; ie at all.  
We all made our way aboard Aurora, and I started up the engine whilst Mary tried to get the dorsal turret up manually. Before she could succeed, I got enough power to run the hydraulics, and the turret rose from within the fuselage. The twin miniguns slid from within the turret body, allowing Mary to get into her seat and begin firing.  
I was relieved to see the enemy boat disintegrate into a cloud of splinters and body parts, but a second became visible behind it. Gunfire began to ping off the hull and starred the toughened glass windshield. Mary could be heard swearing over the intercom for a moment, then she remembered the jargon for the situation. "Stoppage, stoppage!" she shouted. I realised that she must have fired her whole ammunition load into the boat. I rolled my eyes a little, and blasted the remaining boat with my own guns.  
  
Cheers erupted from the shore as I slowly taxied Aurora to a jetty and tied up. Lord Faa grinned broadly and offered his hand. "You have saved many lives," he said. "We are in your debt." I shook the proffered hand. "Don't worry about it. We were in as much danger as you anyhow," I replied. "Now, I think the case has been made in favour of us joining forces, don't you lot think?" The others chorused agreement, except for Mary who was in the cockpit trying to check the Drive system for damage. She needn't have bothered; I could clearly see that the transmitter array's protective nosecone was smashed. It wasn't made of the same supertough metal as the rest of Aurora, which blocked the energies released. I gave her a thumbs down sign, and pointed.  
"Damn!" she shouted in frustration. "There goes half a million's worth of technology!" I sympathised; fixing the Drive would be a delicate and time-consuming process, and the parts had cost more than my last car.  
"Oh, Jesus! Big airborne contacts inbound!" I ran for the cockpit, and examined the radar screen. "Zepplins, lots of them," I muttered to myself, "and a few fighters." I estimated we had about five minutes before they arrived. Mary was already fitting new belts of ammunition to the dorsal guns. I took a quick look at the round counter in my helmet HUD; more than enough left.  
"Let's go, people!"  
(Author's note: You may find that humming the Airwolf theme tune increases your enjoyment of this section.)  
The others scrambled into their positions, except for Will. He took the copilot's seat and switched the rocket pods to his helmet sight. I noticed that the rear gun was deployed none the less.  
"Ever the gentleman," I said mildly. It was one less thing for me to worry about, so what the hell.  
I eased the throttles open, the rising whine having the same effect on my psyche as that really amazing orchestral bit in 'A Day In The Life'. We left the water, and our remaining weapons deployed; missiles from the wings, the rockets below the cockpit, and the lower gun turret. I grabbed for as much height as I could, and swung the nose towards the enemy force.  
"There they are!" Will shouted. "They're just clearing that cloudbank!" He was right. We had a very slight altitude advantage, and they had no way of knowing we were after them.  
"I see 'em. Get ready, folks, we're going to give those bastards one hell of an airshow!" I cut in the afterburners and raced towards our targets. The fighters saw us first, and swarmed in our direction. Pretty soon, they realised their mistake and swerved wildly, ruining their formation. That trick is almost as old as combat flying itself, and I had the added advantage of being in an aircraft that could probably survive a collision. The major problem wouldn't be the fighters, but the 40mm Bofours batteries on the airships, which were inaccurate but numerous and fast firing. Puffs of smoke surrounded us, and shrapnel pinged off the hull.  
  
I sprayed fire in the direction of a fighter which tried to go head to head, but it wasn't damaged seriously. Mary took it out as it veered off. Will, meanwhile, was throwing rockets at zepplins to great effect. They still used hydrogen, rather than helium, and it exploded nicely when hit by a small C4 charge travelling at several hundred miles an hour. One shot slightly misfired, striking an engine gondola and hurling debris in all directions. I tried to avoid it, but a big lump of metal whirled off and slammed squarely into the port engine intake.  
Theoretically, the mesh screen over both intakes would keep out unlucky birds or other small objects, but twenty five kilos of metal was more than they could withstand. The engine burst into flame, and bits of metal scattered everywhere. Our rapid loss of altitude caused Elaine to retract and exit the lower gun turret rather quickly, and I had a hard job regaining control. I pressed the fire button, flooding the afflicted engine with inert gas, and made an emergency landing in a small lake.  
"Shit!" I raged helplessly. We were out of the fight, and the town had no real air defences. I looked out of the transparent ceiling panel in the cockpit, and was astonished to see only two airships, one of which was minus an engine and unable to manouevre. There were two or three fewer fighters than I remembered, as well, and a couple of the survivors were trailing smoke.  
"Nice work, everyone," I said over the intercom. "You OK, Elaine?"  
"A stiff drink wouldn't go amiss," she replied shakily, "but I'll live."  
"Oh, I think we can manage that!"  
The next eight hours are a bit of a blur. Once Aurora had been towed back to town we were given a real hero's welcome. A rough chronological account from my memory is as follows; Us being carried upon the shoulders of the crowd towards the inn -missing scene- Will performing a creditable version of 'Together Forever' by Rick Astley -missing scene- me asserting that marshlights were an easily explicable natural phenomenon -missing scene- and finally me waking up in a rowing boat, extremely hung over and with no idea of where I was. Well, at least this time I could still remember WHO I was. Luckily, a passing barge gave me a ride back to base.  
  
Lyra was in the galley, attempting to provide breakfast for the whole crew. Will helpfully appeared holding a fire extinguisher. "Dame Hannah's boarding school for young ladies doesn't go in for home economics much, does it?" he laughed, waving aside the clouds of smoke. "I never thought I'd meet a worse cook than Dave!"  
"And I never thought I'd meet a worse singer than Roger!" she countered playfully.  
"Morning, you two," I said weakly, rummaging in a drawer for some aspirin.  
"Morning, Dave. So, where did you end up sleeping?"  
"Don't ask," I replied darkly. "Has anyone seen Mary and Elaine? I'm going to need at least three people to help fix that engine, and the damn stabilliser's playing up." Instead of floats, which played merry hell with airborne handling, I had devised a weight-balancing system which pumped hydraulic fluid between two big tanks in the wings. The gyroscope it was connected to was sensitive only to large movements, but we stayed near-perfectly level even in the choppy waters off the Cornish coast. However, one of the pumps was acting up a bit.  
"Mary's on shore, but Mum hasn't surfaced yet. I think she'll want some of these," Will said, taking a couple of aspirins and putting them on a tray with a mug of tea and some toast.  
"I didn't get this treatment," Lyra replied mock-sniffily.  
"Only 'cause you were up before me." I left them to it, and decided to get breakfast from the inn. God willing, I'd have enough survival money to clear my tab; I carried the standard £500 in gold sovereigns, but by the way my head felt that might only just be enough.  
  
Mary was already there, drinking a mug of strong black coffee (apparently yesterday evening had affected her as well) and studying a map of London with Lord Faa. She looked up and smiled wearily.  
"Welcome back. Find any marsh spirits?" Ah, so THAT was what I was doing in that boat.  
"Not one!" I replied, though for all I knew I might have been abducted by aliens and gang-probed. "What's with the map?"  
"We're planning a spontaneous outbreak of civil disorder," Lord Faa replied.  
"Sounds like fun. Any particular target, or is it just going to be a smash-everything job?"  
"We've got several important buildings in mind, which we want to get into rather than simply burn down. There's useful information to be had," Mary replied. "If we can fight our way up to them-"  
"I think you might be going about this slightly the wrong way. The Magisterium will realise what happened and probably take action that will make whatever intelligence you gather utterly useless, if you obviously break into a government building," I replied.  
"Oh?" said Lord Faa.  
"A bit of molotov cocktail chucking would be a fantastic distraction, which would give us a shot at some housebreaking. By all means set the place on fire afterwards," I suggested. "I don't claim to be an expert in this stuff, but I reckon we ought to try something like this..." 


	5. Power to the People!

The plan was fairly simple, but demanded split-second timing. Aurora would make a diversionary strike on the zepplin station -usually referred to as the Aerodock- and cause as much mayhem as possible. Whilst the police, fire servce and so forth were sorting that out, the riots would begin.  
Once we were thouroughly engaged with the enemy, supported by barges mounting heavy machine guns, a small picked band of gyptians would raid various significant buildings in Whitehall and grab any useful information that they could find. Once they were successful, a pyrotechnic signal would call Aurora in for a devastating airstrike on the buildings targeted, eliminating any evidence of a break in.  
As far as possible, individual 'riot squads' were given freedom of action; battle plans tended not to survive engagement with the enemy, so it was better to leave squad leaders to make their own decisions.  
It had taken a lot of work to prepare for this. Once Mary and I had patched up the Drive and got enough performance out of the damaged engine for one jump, I took Aurora back to our own world for a proper repair job and some resupplying. Fortunately, the system Mary had devised for telling where a fissure led based on frequencies of background radiation or something worked perfectly, and I reappeared just off the coast of Norfolk. My contacts obtained replacement engine parts and some Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, as well as more minigun ammunition. Linking them to the helmet sight for the rockets was easy, as the software package was designed to be used for both; it was basically a modification of the system from an Apache helicopter gunship. I also acquired additional small arms, survival kit and a flight suit for Lyra.  
Aurora only needed one person to pilot, and the turrets weren't exactly a skilled job, so only Mary found herself in the air. I wound up leading the Canary Wharf mob.  
  
"Come ON, Mary. What's taking so bloody long?" I threw away another cigarette butt, and checked my rifle for the hundredth time. Our standard weapon was the Heckler & Koch G36, a compact and powerful 5.56mm weapon that looked a bit like a prop from Space: Above and Beyond. With the stock folded up and the magazine removed it would fit inside an ordinary gym bag.  
Elaine sighted along her SPAS 12 pump action shotgun; of course, SHE had to be different, didn't she? For all that, it could take the hinges off a door pretty well, and provide deadly close-up punch. "Stop worrying," she told me. "What's the rush? The damn Ministry of Red Tape and Pointless Beauracracy isn't going anywhere in a hurry."  
"I know, I know. It's just that I reckon just sitting here waiting is even worse than actually getting shot at..." A dull boom of sound was followed by a volley of detonations, as Aurora strafed the Aerodock's main landing stage with rockets and guns. "Right, that's our cue!"  
(Author's note: another 'hum this song' moment; try Pulse by the Mad Capsule Markets.)  
My group of sixty men and women armed with an eclectic mix of weapons charged out of the alleyway we had been lurking in. An extremely startled constable drew his revolver and fired, then blew his whistle until he was cut down. He was the first.  
We charged through the streets, shooting at every copper we saw, hurling Molotov cocktails and generally making lots of noise. However, we found ourselves facing more organised opposition. The police had responded quickly, with as many men as they could lay hold of running to intercept us. Most groups found themselves locked in static gunfights, with nobody having a clear advantage and very few of the shots fired actually hitting anybody.  
The barges, internally and inconspicuously armoured beneath their wooden exteriors, were a godsend. They kept both the police and the rapidly deployed soldiers pinned down well away from the waterfront with .50 calibre fire, and gave the hastily scrambled fighter aircraft almost as hard a time as Aurora. Under Mary's guidance, our big silver bird was twisting through the sky, blasting seven kinds of hell out of anything and everything.  
Meanwhile, our inside contact in Whitehall slipped quietly out of a back exit, unnoticed by the panic-stricken employees of the Ministry of Theology. Doubtless it never occurred to them to vet the young messenger-boy, even if he was of gyptian origin.  
  
Our 'surreptitious entry' specialists obtained a large number of documents, and made a hasty exit. I know this because we were in a pitched battle with police and troops near the Ministry. A small lad of about Will's age legged it to our impromptu barricade, and ducked behind it.  
"They've done it," he said. "We might want to be somewhere else now, you know!" I looked at him very, very carefully. This could be a hoax, or a trick to get us to break cover. I finally realised that he looked so much like Tony that they must be brothers just as Aurora took out the building. We were out of Mary's line of sight so she couldn't have known we were there.  
  
There was a bang, and a blast that lifted me over the heap of purloined grain sacks which were doubling as sandbags. I hit the ground pretty hard, but not fatally. In theory, Hellfire missiles won't smash a building up too much, but the moulten copper they spray out to penetrate armour plating will start fires readily. I was therefore rather surprised when the building fell over on top of me.  
I regained consciousness reluctantly, to find lying buried to the chest in fallen masonry. My G36 was a twisted wreck, I couldn't draw my pistol, and there were running footsteps approaching. I tried to crawl from the heap of bricks, but pain shot through every part of my body. My right leg didn't work properly, and I could barely clench my left hand. Seeing as my pistol was under my right arm, this meant that I was totally defenceless.  
"Dave! Are you OK? DAVE!" It was Elaine's voice, I realised with the calm sense of detachment that only a severe head injury can provide under such circumstances. "Say something, Dave!"  
"Oh bugger, a wall just fell on me," I offered with a weak smile. "A little help would be much appreciated."  
Two gyptians appeared with a stretcher, and I was carried to a waiting barge. The fight seemed to be winding down, but the odd burst of fire echoed across the river now and then. The initial shock had worn off, and the pain began. A rough estimate by the few outlying areas of my mind not pierced by burning needles of agony estimated the damage at two or three cracked ribs, a broken leg and bruises just about everywhere. I felt a sharp sting in my arm, the pain eased and I drifted off...  
  
I wrestled with the canopy, lost my patience and shattered it with a shot from my pistol. Bad idea, I realised rather late. It'd bring the bloody Argies running, as if a crashed Harrier hadn't already done that. I climbed uncomfortably out of the cockpit and flopped heavily to the ground.  
Whatever else I thought of this miserable place, I had to admit that the rain meant the ground was reasonably soft. Other than that however, this was about the most depressing place on Earth to wage a war. My suspicion that we were here to retake the Iron Lady's marginal constituencies rather than the Falklands per se wasn't helping.  
I directed curses at Galtieri, his airforce and the Conservative party for several minutes. It felt a bit better. Having vented some of my frustrations, I turned my attention to the matter of survival. I pulled the various helpful items of equipment from the plane (leaving everything else) and started walking in what I hoped was the direction of Port Stanley. Then, out of nowhere, a bullet sliced across my shoulder, pitching me to the ground...  
  
"Dave? You still with us?" I made vaguely affirmative noises, and opened my eyes. I was surprised to realise that I was in my bunk aboard Aurora. Somehow, the whole crew plus Lyra and both daemons had squeezed into the room, which was barely wider than the length of the bed.  
"I think so. Shit!" I clutched my head. "This is actually worse than the fallout from that big dogfight. Amazing."  
"Sorry about that," Mary replied. "You shouldn't really have been there, and I couldn't see your position when I made the run."  
"Not your fault; the building shouldn't have gone up like that, not with Hellfires. I wonder why it blew up like that?" I shrugged. "Any other casualties?"  
"Not many, two or three dead and a dozen wounded. Lord Faa is well pleased with the results, and we got hold of some VERY interesting information," Will replied. "It seems that a lot of Church brass have fallen back to a stronghold of some sort, up North somewhere. They've built some sort of fortress, and they're hoping to hold out long enough to gather forces for a counterattack."  
"But they don't know that WE know," Lyra said, grinning evilly.  
"And they want to blow it up," I guessed.  
"Not until we've gained a few allies; the witches, probably Iorek and the bears too," Lyra replied. "Which means you get a few weeks to recover."  
"At home," Elaine added in a tone with which I dared not argue.  
  
The five of us returned to our own world the next day, to find Frank being removed from his office by Customs and Excise officers, and all our planes being confiscated.  
"Lok, I'm telling you, I didn't know about the drugs! I'd have had a bloody percentage out of the buggers if I had!" he protested. We landed at the opposite end of the field, taxied to a vacant runway, and did some metaphorical innocent whistling.  
Elaine found us another hangar somewhere else, and I worked on getting hold of some AGM-54 Mavericks, which could knock out a tank and put a decent dent in a fortified building. Lyra was brought up to speed with the others in weapons and survival techniques, and Mary perfected a retractable nosecone, allowing us to put the Drive's rather fragile business end behind the same tough alloy as the rest of the plane. Will, much to his disgust, was forced to return to school. With typical ingenuity, he devised a reasonably plausible means of avoiding a truancy record- faking his own death with forged documents. I only just found out in time to put a stop to the whole crazy venture before he got himself arrested, and thankfully the Christmas break came around before he could come up with something else.  
We landed just off the coast, and found a large tramp steamer waiting for us. Lord Faa, bright spark that he was, wanted to winch Aurora aboard.   
"We're heading for the North!" he told us enthusiastically. "We've enlisted the bears and some of the witches, and we've nearly two thousand men already there!"  
The war was beginning. 


	6. Northward Ho!

Xanthania, flying through a space beyond mortal comprehension, was joined by a fellow angel. Insofar as angels actually breathe, the newcomer appeared breathless.  
  
"A new window just opened, and closed almost instantaneously," he reported. "No Spectre was created, and the escape of Dust was negligible." For the first time in quite a while, Xanthania was somewhat surprised. "Find out where, and how," she ordered. "We had better investigate this very carefully."  
  
Angels are not omnicognisant, much as they like people to believe they are; only the Boss could see the fall of every sparrow and so on (it is my opinion that He probably doesn't bother to watch all of them hit the ground). Therefore, it required much patient detective work to trace this remarkable new technology. Much clandestine surveillance later, they reported back.  
  
Apparently originating in Will Parry's world, the aircraft was far in advance of the Magisterium's relatively embryonic air force. It was also heavily armed, and the Magisterium's effort to destroy it had backfired precipitously. The angels had been rather amused at this.  
  
Some apparent thought had gone into preventing Dust escaping; the magnetic field generated by the craft kept it completely clear, so it would not even bring a minute quantity within its pressurised interior.  
  
"I will address these travellers myself," Xanthania decided. "They may not be aware of Asriel's rift, and might damage the seal we placed upon it if they are careless." //Besides,// she added mentally, //I have a favour to ask of them.//  
  
It was a four day journey, which I recall only as a haze of cold, damp and bad food. At least I wasn't seasick; used to be in Fleet Air Arm, didn't I?  
  
We made landfall in a small and nameless whaling station, and set up our headquarters. Aurora was winched carefully over the side of the ship, wings folded, and put into flying order.  
  
The landing gear was unconventional; small wheels mounted at the sides of broad snow skids, folding inwards if the terrain warranted it. I was rather proud of this little touch, and a glance at the choppy ice-filled bay made me thankful I'd thought of it. Keeping a short strip of ground flat and level would be a major encumberence, but so would pranging our plane on an ice floe at takeoff speed.  
  
We hastily established the location of the Magisterium's redoubt; not far from the 'Experimental Station'. Whether this was coincidence or black humour I can't say. It would also be a bugger to get to at this time of year, with the sea surrounding the island liquid for a change. Getting our two thousand volunteers there would be a logistical nightmare at the best of times, but Lord Faa had devised a reasonably workable plan involving small, light boats that could be carried to the shore and assembled in minutes. The witches had their own means of transportation, but how the bears proposed to make the crossing I had no idea. That, fortunately, was somebody else's problem.  
  
Once we had sorted out our base camp, a full day's work in itself, Aurora took off on a reconissance mission to gauge the strength of the enemy force. It was about half an hour's flight at cruising speed and twenty thousand feet. Mary and I alternated between flying and coffee-making duty.  
  
"Phew! Radar looks like Heathrow at the start of the summer holiday," Will remarked. "Zepplins, planes, helos and a few things I don't recognise. RWR's all clear." The Radar Warning Reciever functioned much like the radar detectors people bought to defend themselves against traffic cops; speed traps now use a light reflection system instead. Any electromagnetic emission was spotted and traced, and we could avoid or neutralise it before we were detected.  
  
Mary was operating the camera ball in the nose. It sported low-light, thermal image and Dust viewing cameras, which could all be monitored simultaneously. "Lots of vehicles on the ground, and a whole bunch of heated buildings. Lots of witches in the air, too." That explained some of the stranger radar signals. "Whoa! Take a look at this, people!" I looked at my own small LCD monitor, which was usually set to display a repeat of the radar screen; I flew single-seat Harriers for so long I'm not comfortable without being able to see it for myself. The monitor now showed the camera used for targeting fissures, a glowing snowstorm of Dust particles with intermittent, static points of light; microfissures. I could clearly see the outline of a huge... well, I guess you'd call it a MACROfissure. It was obscured by a strip of 'normal' sky, and I was reminded of a patch over the worn out knee of a pair of trousers. This was a pretty fair comparison; we were looking at Asriel's great Rift.  
  
"Better put full safeties on the Drive," Mary remarked. "That seal doesn't look too tough. We try to make a jump anywhere near that and pow!" I shut off power to the Drive, and locked the nosecone in place so that a short in the electrics wouldn't set it off by accident. "I'm going to do a flypast of that rift, and we'll make some scans," I said. "I wonder how they blocked it up, anyway?" Lyra and Elaine brought some of our fancier gadgets to bear as I neared the rift. Asriel's papers, obtained from the Ministry in the raid, had been invaluable in putting together some of our more unorthodox kit. Mary had had a great deal of fun with her new toys, which I as the mere stick-and-rudder man couldn't begin to understand.  
  
We took a parallel course to the rift, and Will shut off the radar so as not to affect our scan. I wasn't all that worried; the Lights, our plane's namesake, made anything in the sky difficult to see from below. I was reminded of our unit badge, which Elaine had created during the crossing. It showed Aurora flying across a sky filled with the Lights, and had each of our initials on; I used my mother's maiden surname, Savage, because they only got married after I was born so I can use both. I frequently do, especially on official forms, because all of Her Majesty's Forces love to annoy the beauracracy.  
  
Xanthania chose this moment to put in an appearance, causing me to nearly stall. She drifted effortlessly off our starboard wing, apparently amused at my reaction.  
  
"What the HELL is THAT?" I yelled, arming Sidewinders.  
  
"What does it look like?" Mary enquired laconically.  
  
"Something I saw the first and only time I tried hard drugs!" Xanthania showed no sign of being offended at this. She drifted around to the front of the cockpit, maintaining relative speed and distance, and smiled.  
  
"Greetings," she said. "You are the travellers from another world." It wasn't a question. Mary raised her helmet's visor, and Will and Lyra followed suit. "I believe we've met?" Mary said with a faint smile.  
  
Xanthania was not entirely surprised; she supposed she ought to have expected this, really. Something showed in her expression, however.  
  
"Oh, come ON," Will laughed; it was clear he was enjoying having the drop on her. "Did you really think we'd just give up and get on with our lives?"  
  
"I knew you would search for another way to travel to this world, my child," she conceeded. "I did not anticipate that you would find it so soon."  
  
"All credit for that should go to Dr Malone. The jump drive, the fissure targeting system, most of the scanning technology onboard this thing; all hers," I pointed out.  
  
"Hey, you designed the plane!" Elaine reminded me.  
  
Xanthania smiled. "It appears that I was wrong, my children. For a time I thought I should have made you forget about each other," Lyr and Will looked at each other in horror, "But I am glad I did not. I wish you well with your travels!" She accelerated away and vanished into a fissure, for all the world like the Starship Enterprise going to warp.  
  
"You know," I said thoughtfully, "not so long ago I would have thought that was really, REALLY weird. We quite definitely saw that, yes?"  
  
"Yes," the others chorused.  
  
"And there is no possibility of Elaine's medication getting into the tea?"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Just making sure."  
  
We returned to base and presented our findings to the council of war that rapidly established itself. "A frontal assault would be suicidal, especially for your forces, Ms Pekkala," I said. "Their aerial strength is formidable, and Aurora would be as much of a hazard to you as the clans supporting the Magisterium; blue-on-blue incidents are going to be inevitable if we go in together." I avoided the term 'friendly fire', a euphemism employed by the media which does not amuse those who have been on the wrong end of it.  
  
"Then you will attack first, inflict as much damage as you can, and withdraw. My sisters and I will follow up your initial strike in force," the witch-queen replied. "I would advise that the ground assault wait until you have completed your attack, too." This made sense; I hadn't really envisioned close air support to be one of the roles Aurora was to be employed in. The embarassing business at the Ministry proved that if Aurora WAS to be employed as a ground attack aircraft, friendly forces should be a safe distance away.  
  
"We'll certainly soften them up a bit," I remarked, "but we can't carry enough ordinance to wipe out EVERYTHING in one attack run. There are more tanks than space for antitank weapons."  
  
"We have ways of dealing with such things," Lord Faa said, smiling like a wolf that's cornered a sheep. "You haven't seen a fire hurler in action, have you David?" Iorek Brynsson made an attempt at a smile; an expression bears are not well equipped for, facially. "I will arrange a demonstration," he said with a satisfied growl.  
  
The fire hurler threw several hundredweight of burning rock at a disused building atop a frozen lake; the building was totally destroyed and the lake melted. Lyra earned my everlasting admiration by calling Iorek a showoff.  
  
Then we noticed a zepplin flying across the bleak, icy landscape towards our target. "A supply run," I suggested. "I wonder if it goes past regularly?"  
  
"Uh oh," Elaine deadpanned. "Here comes another one of his clever ideas..."  
  
***  
  
The zepplin skimmed the bleak snowfields at top speed -around thirty miles an hour. It wasn't particularly large, with only two engines and a single gondola, and most of its interior not occupied by the gasbags was dedicated to freight.  
  
Unusually, the control room was situated in the nose, rather than the gondola. The gondola itself was used as accomodation and mess facilities for the half of the six man crew not on watch; London to Svalbard nonstop is quite a long trip at that speed.  
  
Its captain, a gloomy and bad tempered Scotsman, looked at his gauges and winced. No. 2 engine was overheating, OVERHEATING a day's flight from the Pole, for the love of God!  
  
"Whit tha hell're ye playin' at, mon! We're off course again!" The helmsman cursed and twisted the wheel. "Damn crosswind! If the engines weren't on full boost we'd be going sideways, skipper."  
  
"Aye, but No. 2's on her last legs, so ye'd better- bugger!" A bell began ringing; engine fire. Immediately, all hands went to emergency stations.  
  
The heavy crosswind, accentuated by the failure of the starboard engine, sent the zepplin careering around in a circle. The wind fanned the engine fire, sending sparks towards the outer skin, which unlike that of modern combat airships was not fireproof. Rapidly, an uncontrollable structural fire was raging. Hastily, the crew vented the gas before it could ignite. Slowly, painfully, the zepplin hit the ground.  
  
So much for our plan to intercept it, fill it with our troops and infiltrate the enemy stronghold!  
  
"OK, change of plan, folks," I said in a cheerfully homicidal tone, as used frequently by PE teachers. We turned our sleds around and headed for base, swearing mightily. That was a rather useful idea up the spout.  
  
The representitives of the Magisterium met in a comfortably furnished room, over cigars and brandy. Their conversation was decidedly grim  
  
"That infernal aerocraft was seen not far from here," complained one of the cardinals. "It looks like the attack on the Ministry was indeed a blind for an intelligence-gathering raid. What in the name of God are we to do now?"  
  
"Pray," suggested a thin, ascetic-looking member of the Union of Lay Preachers, who was one of the few genuinely devout individuals present.  
  
"Be practical, for crying out loud!" said the High Chief Pardoner.  
  
"Our profession is supposed to regard PRAYING as practical."  
  
The leader of the Guild of Summoners finished his drink, excused himself from the meeting, and gently banged his head on a convenient wall. //What the hell's going to be the end of this business?// he wondered.  
  
"Fools, all of them. Selfish, arrogant fools who've sold their souls to the Devil for the chance to boss people about," complained the Lay Preacher, emerging from the room.  
  
The Summoner nodded. "It was that obscene business with the Oblation Board that did it for me."  
  
"Oh, Samuel, they lost their wits and their humanity long before then. Pre-emptive pennance, anyone? I like to credit the Almighty with a bit of sense, you know, but apparently they don't!" The Lay Preacher faced his friend.  
  
Summoners have recieved something of a bad press from Geoffrey Chaucer, as have pardoners. The latter were frequently outright crooks, but Summoners were a largely honest body of men. There is, after all, very little criminal opportunity in being the illiterate medieval equivalent of the Church notice board. And this particular summoner was a deeply troubled man.  
  
"They'll use that appalling bomb if it comes to that," he said. "They're desperate to hold on to their power, desperate enough to use the atomcraft weapon."  
  
The Lay Preacher crossed himself. "God forbid! Not even Asriel was mad enough to use such a weapon!"  
  
"Most of the others are, however. We have no choice," said the Summoner. "We must take what men remain loyal to us and aid these rebels before this gets out of hand!"  
  
DUN DUN DUH! Sorry it took a while; exams and all that. Well, CW, it's not exactly mini-nukes and particle beam weapons but it's close. Adios! 


	7. The One With The Explosions

Ceres Wunderkid will no doubt be gratified to know that I'm writing this shortly after watching xXx on DVD, so this chapter will feature lots and lots of explosions (see reviews), and also my FictionPress character/alter ego Jonathan West and his adolescent psycho mates the Young Guns. Diehard fans will feel compelled to flame me to smithereens after this one.  
  
A quick recap for those who have just joined us:  
  
Mary Malone develops a method of travelling between worlds. The drawback; it needs a vehicle travelling at at least Mach 2 to work. Luckily, Jonathan Parry's family is owed a very large favour by a former pilot. He designs them an aircraft to take them on a journey unmatched in the field of aviation... a journey to new worlds. He also becomes our narrator, struggling to retain some sort of grip on reality and doing okay, and managing to be faintly amusing from time to time in the process.  
  
Their reception in Lyra's world is hostile, which the Magisterium comes to regret. They have basically picked a fight with the crew of a fighting aircraft unmatched by anything their world has ever seen. Quickly recruiting Lyra, the Aurora Borealis crew ally themselves with rebel forces seeking the overthrow of the corrupt theocracy. The Magisterium would never know what hit it.  
  
"My name is Dave. I agreed to look after Will because his father saved my life, many years ago. If I'd known that this would lead to me: Getting stranded in an alternate dimension, on the run from the law; crashing a hijacked steam locomotive into a bog; getting badly injured by falling masonry in a street battle to rival the one in Black Hawk Down and loads of stuff I haven't written down yet... I'd still have done it. It would have been nice, however, if I could have done all that without Elaine Parry being sarcastic at me for a lot of the time. But, well, I guess I'll get used to that..."  
  
Our attack lost no momentum, with plans being made ready and rehearsals performed as best as we could. With only a couple of books by Andy McNab and Peter Radcliffe, I attempted to instruct the volunteersw in the rudiments of Close Quarters Battle. I was not a good teacher, and knowing sod-all about what I was trying to teach didn't help.  
  
Elaine handed me a newspaper article from just after we had left: TEENAGE KILLERS IN JAIL BREAKOUT.  
  
"Some kid ran away from home and blew up his dad, then went on the run with his girlfriend and a few other kids. He got hold of a gun from somewhere, and shot at least four cops when they tried to arrest him. They finally arrest his girlfriend instead, and the others tool up with a whole bunch of weapons and break her out of jail!" I was appalled, but impressed. Will and Lyra were just impressed. Mary was practical.  
  
"We need these kids; they have skills we can use."  
  
We decided that if we couldn't find and recruit them in 48 hours we'd have to manage without. They were rumoured to be in London, so we headed there as soon as we transited to our own world.  
  
It was late, and this was a very dodgy part of Brixton. The well-spoken, nicely dressed young man was therefore either suicidal or thick, calling a cab on a cellphone in a deserted street. He showed little surprise when a Stanley knife pricked the back of his neck, but casually pocketed his phone and put his hands in his jacket pockets.  
  
"What do you want?" he asked, not alarmed in any way. He was flanked by two kids about his own age; one held the knife, the other a broken bottle.  
  
"How 'bout that phone, dickhead?" The potential victim actually laughed.  
  
"What's the first rule of mugging? Hard and fast, don't give them time to react, and don't let them do THIS!" Both hands left his sides in a blur. The knife wielder's arm locked with the victim's. The Stanley knife jerked away, and the target plunged a knife of his own into his asailant's arm. The blade hit bone.  
  
The other one caught the barrel of a big semi-automatic pistol across the bridge of his nose, and went down hard.  
  
"Second rule of mugging; learn to spot concealed firearms," Jonathan West said, laughing contemptuously. "Honestly, you scare a few old ladies and primary school kids and think you're Jean-Claude van Damme. Pathetic!"  
  
I observed this from a safe distance, and applauded. "Good one, Mr West. You just proved you've got what it takes."  
  
"To do what?" he enquired cautiously. The pistol's safety was off.  
  
"The job I am about to offer you and your colleagues. Is there somewhere we can talk?"  
  
***  
  
"It sounds just crazy enough to be true," John pronounced, after hearing as much of the story as I thought he'd believe; not much. "And for this kind of money I'll believe anything. You lot?"  
  
"It's not like we've got anything better to do," a fair-haired kid with a foreign accent declared.  
  
"Five grand is five grand," added a tough looking girl who'd been introduced as Trish.  
  
"The science checks out six ways to Sunday, too," added a black kid with a public school accent. "It might actually be true."  
  
The tall, good-looking one shrugged; a 'what the hell' gesture. A pale, shy-looking girl who hadn't spoken yet nodded.  
  
"Well, 'Mr Smith', you have yourself a deal," John concluded.  
  
"Great! This address, tomorrow at ten. I'll have the money by then, in cash, of course."  
  
"Used, non-sequential small bills, please!" We laughed.  
  
They arrived, carrying a variety of bags. Rucksacks were universal, gym bags almost so; John had a cricketer's bag for some reason, and the good-looking guy -Charlie- just had a rucksack.  
  
"Ready?" I asked.  
  
"Of course," John replied. "Nice little plane, by the way."  
  
"Thanks. I'd better introduce you to the rest of the team. Hey, you lot! Our new friends have arrived!"  
  
The 'Young Guns' hit it off with Will quite rapidly. He'd had bad experiences with the law himself, and found them a refreshing change from his usual peer group. They could talk about combat tactics with authority, and personal firsthand knowledge.  
  
Lyra drew longing looks from the two youngest (and single) members, Mick and Sandy. Mick alternated between da gangsta speak and cultured poshness in the hope that one of them worked, and Sandy increased his accent, which he thought made him sound sexier. Lyra thought this rather sweet, but casually strolled over to Will and gave him a quick kiss. "Lucky bastard," Sandy remarked just loud enough for Will to hear. He was starting to enjoy almost every adult male they ran into envying the bejesus out of him!  
  
We all crammed aboard Aurora, and I took off from Sywell for a second time in a jet, earning me a few strange looks from the ground. We lined up on a suitable fissure and went through the usual proccedures.  
  
"Right, hold tight you lot!" I warned, activating the Drive. It wasn't as bad since we had installed tinted, one-way mirror type windows, which reduced the glare from the Drive as well as looking very flash. I set the autopilot with the course for Svalbard and went into the lounge area. It was rather more crowded than I expected, to say the least.  
  
"I think you might have skipped over a few details so that we wouldn't think you were nuts," John suggested, a large, sleek polecat curled up on his shoulder. "Would you care to explain all this, now that it's actually happened?"  
  
This struck me as Lyra's province rather than mine. I retreated to the cockpit before he asked any more questions, which I currently felt il-equipped to deal with.  
  
They grasped the fundamentals fairly quickly, Mick having only fairly recently grown out of a Digimon fixation. During the flight to our forward HQ we got some kind of a plan together. There were several supply zepplin trips per month, and we would raid the first one that came along and pack it with our forces, and then sail on to the oblivious opposing camp.  
  
"I always fancied a go at fast-roping," John said with a truly alarming grin. "Know anything about it?"  
  
"I'm a fighter pilot. The only combat I'm an expert in is at a distance of a couple of miles with missiles and twenty-mil cannon. That's why I hired YOU," I explained. "I really don't think rappelling from an airship is going to work, anyway."  
  
"How about parachutes? You must know something about using THOSE," suggested Will. "Well, you taught us how, so I bloody hope you do!" I wished I hadn't let him watch all those action thrillers.  
  
Once we arrived we discovered that our ranks had been swelled by a breakaway faction led by a lay preacher and a Summoner. With some reservations, suspecting some sort of clever plan, we permitted them to assist us. They also explained that preparations were being made to deploy what they referred to as explosive-metal bombs, but which to me were simply nuclear weapons.  
  
"They really are getting desperate, then," I concluded. The stakes were getting higher; we had to finish this NOW, no matter what the cost, for whatever price we paid would be paltry in comparison with the alternative.  
  
We made flight preparations in silence, making certain that we had the buildings indicated as important by our new friends marked down precisely. I left Mary to finish checking the FLIR system and wandered in the direction of a small tavern in the town with the intention of obtaining some lunch.  
  
I hadn't even reached the door when I felt a stunning blow on the back of my head, and there was blackness for a long while.  
  
I came to in a small cellar, my head throbbing. "Christ, my head!" I said to myself, looking around. "Anyone else in here?"  
  
"Ah, so you're awake. I wondered how long it would be." The voice wasn't exactly friendly, but not entirely hostile either. Its source was undiscernable in the gloom.  
  
"Who are you?" I asked, guardedly.   
  
"Do you mind if we do the introductions the other way around? You have no daemon, but you don't sound like one of the Severed, so I imagine you aren't from around here. Your voice and manner says 'soldier' but your build doesn't; you don't do much route marching, anyway. And I've got no idea what those clothes are that you're wearing. You have the advantage of me."  
  
"Okay. You got the first bit right, I'm not from this particular world. I used to be a military pilot, and this suit is designed to prevent the effects of high-g turns and low atmospheric pressure; not an issue with the local level of aerospace technology." I paused, thinking. "I'm with the rebels, and I presume they coshed me so that I can be coerced into revealing information about the plan of attack. It's a bit late for that now, seeing as the first phase of the assault is already in progress, but I'm not going to explain right now. I can't tell if you're a plant, and this place might be bugged."  
  
The unseen man's voice chuckled. "I'm impressed. You're doing much better than me when I was first captured. I imagine you will be familiar with me by reputation," he added. "I am Lord Asriel."  
  
"Yes, and I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't think it's possible to get any deader than him, from the somewhat sketchy account Lyra gave me." He moved into the light, and I was forced to reasess this viewpoint. The resemblance to Lyra was striking, even under a layer of accumulated grime and quite a few bruises. Something showed in my expression.  
  
"I don't know how or why I survived, in fact I can barely recall the whole thing with any clarity, but I'm not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, my friend, how did you wind up in this world?"  
  
"Will Parry's father is an old friend of mine," I explained. "When the kid and a certain Dr Mary Malone came up with a way to travel between worlds it needed an aircraft for assorted technical reasons, so I volunteered to design and fly it. And if they kidnapped me to ground the plane they'll be sadly disappointed, because I taught Mary to fly it as well."  
  
"I see. Before I was captured I heard rumours of such an aircraft. How did you manage to overcome the issues of Dust?"  
  
"It's deflected by the strong magnetic field we need to generate to open a fissure, and they only stay open for a couple of seconds anyway. The working principles are similar to your attempt, only a lot less crude and environmentally damaging, and with a far less inhumane power source." I turned around to treat him to the full force of my glare. "Listen Asriel, -if you really ARE Asriel- I know what you were doing at Bolvangar, which means that A: I think you're an unscrupulous bastard and B: I don't trust you as far as you'd travel if I gave you a good boot up the arse, which I'd be sorely tempted to do under other circumstances. I never thought I'd meet a man with a messianic AND napoleonic complex!"  
  
"Hurling insults isn't going to get us out of here," he replied coolly. "I recommend a temporary armistice until we get back to civilisation. We can punch each other then."  
  
"I'll hold you to that," I warned, examining the door. Escape and Evasion training hadn't covered this, the emphasis being on not revealing anything tactically important and not getting oneself killed in foolhardy escape attempts, like I was doing now. I decided being gunned down whilst running away would be better than enduring the company of this maniac, and checked my pockets for anything I could use. Astonishingly, impossibly, my pistol was still in its holster.  
  
"Me too," Asriel explained, holding up a snub-nosed revolver. "Perhaps they hoped we'd kill ourselves, or each other. Perhaps they just couldn't be bothered to search us. I really couldn't say."  
  
I gave up, glaring at the door with excessive malice. There wasn't even a lock, just a bar on the other side, a heavy one by the way it rattled. There was a small hatch through which food was given to us, which I couldn't prise open despite all my efforts. In desperation, I turned to the hinges, and hit paydirt.  
  
I prised the pins out of them with a pocketknife loaned to me by Asriel, and pulled the door backwards until it crashed against the flagstones. A lively crash indicated that I'd jolted the bar out of its cradles, an unexpected stroke of luck. I gave the door a solid kick, and it crashed to the ground. I emerged cautiously into a badly-lit corridor, and wondered which direction to go in. Asriel immediately turned left, so I decided upon going right.  
  
I came to a flight of steps, leading upwards. I ducked behind a pillar at the sound of voices and approaching footsteps.  
  
"They won't shoot at THIS building, not with him in here."  
  
"Who, the pilot?"  
  
"No, that Belacqua brat's father. If the traitors know about him -and it's a safe bet that they do- they'll blow up everything else but this building. And with the explosive-metal devices stored here, it won't matter." Oh, SHIT!  
  
The renegades hadn't told us about Asriel, even if they DID know, but they had told us where the nukes were stored. I was fairly sure that Lyra wouldn't exactly weep salt tears for her father, but the gyptians were another matter. They owed Asriel one, though having to clear up after the Experimental Station might affect the issue.  
  
My current immediate concern was the fact that this building and several others in the immediate vicinity were soon going to be recieving an AGM-65 Maverick apiece courtesy of Aurora, and I didn't particularly want to hang around for a closeup view, what all with the fissile materials stacked up in here someplace. Asriel could take his chances, not that there was much I could do to help him even if I felt inclined to.  
  
I waited for the guards to retreat, and ascended the stairs cautiously. I heard a hoarse cry of alarm behind me; should have thought to replace and rebar the door, really. I ran up the stairs and found myself in a guardroom, currently unoccupied. I gave the weapon locker's door a solid kick, and examined its contents critically. What appeared to be a Sten gun would do nicely, I concluded, slotting a magazine into the weapon and pocketing a few more. Time to be somewhere else...  
  
Asriel was unsurprised at the sudden blare of klaxons. Stelmaria crawled further into his jacket, grumbling. He ducked a wild burst of shots, and pelted towards the vehicle pool. He noticed distractedly that some wit had removed the second letter L from the sign, and investigated the assortment of trucks, Snowcat-type vehicles and other motive power on offer. He eventually settled on a small vehicle resembling a motorcycle, but with tracks at the rear and a pair of skis instead of a front wheel (it looked a bit like a cross between a snowmobile and those weird half-tracked bikes the Wehrmacht sometimes used in WWII to me).  
  
Soldiers were running everywhere, shouting at each other and firing at anything that moved. The semidarkness, illuminated uncertainly by the Lights, made telling friend from foe next to impossible. Asriel's fellow-escapee would have an easier time of it; he probably regarded everyone, up to and including Asriel himself, as the enemy.  
  
I found my way to the outside, and cast my mind back to the planning session. Six buildings arranged in a rectangle, with a large expanse of prefabricated barrack huts behind, and a short airstrip off to the east a short way. I had a working mental map of the whole base, and set off in the direction of the airstrip. Asriel was getting shot at, having roared off on his new bike, and nobody paid much attention to one shadowy figure.  
  
The airstrip consisted of a runway, several hangars, and a mess building/control tower. I approached the latter, and kicked in the door. Four pilots looked at me in utter astonishment, and caught a full magazine at chest height. A roar above me indicated the supply zepplin coming in overhead, and I wondered if they'd captured it this time.  
  
I hastily put on some flying kit; oxygen mask, parachute, etcetera. Then I headed to the nearest hangar, reloading the Sten as I did so. Those four pilots had probably been on QRA (Quick Reaction Alert), so they would have ready aircraft waiting for them should the base be attacked. Logic dictated that these be in the hangar nearest to the Mess, and probably guarded; Grand Theft L'Avion isn't just the stuff of movies like Firefox.  
  
There was one guard for four aircraft, and he only had a pistol. I dropped him with a three-round burst, and turned my attention to the problem of getting one of the planes in the air. They appeared to be Typhoons, or something similar, with a battery of wingtip rockets as well as some potent cannons. I gave the nearest one's propeller a swing, and started it up. It started okay, so I climbed aboard and taxied out of the hangar. It was set up in such a way as to allow a departing plane to simply scream forwards on full boost, but I had a job to do first. Leaving the plane idling, I climbed onto the wings of all three others and treated their controls to a quick squirt from the Sten. Discarding it, all magazines no being exhausted, I reboarded my own plane and took off.  
  
A frantic voice yelled at me over the radio, and I swung around and treated the control tower to all eight rockets. It fell neatly across the runway, inextricably trapping the remaining aircraft and preventing those in the air from landing. Several such were homing in on me, and I made sure my cannons were ready. I was also attracting groundfire, so I decided that in this instance discretion might not be the better part of valour but was certainly prudent in this instance, and made a run for it.  
  
It had been quite a while since I'd flown anything with propellers. I was far too used to Aurora's long legs and amazing handling. This felt like a breeze block in comparison. I kept up visual search for enemy planes, missing radar, and eventually had to swerve to avoid a burst of fire from a helicopter that swung in behind me unexpectedly. Images of Airwolf dogfighting with a P51 at some point in Series 2 came back to me, and I looped over to get a shot at the enemy's rear. I'd been keeping my airspeed low to avoid leaving easily visible vapour trails, so the chopper had taken its chance. I now took mine, ploughing tank-busting shells into its tail. I was rewarded with a spectacular fireball.  
  
The Magisterium's entire airforce were now turning on me. I shoved the throttles forward and the nose down, and prayed.  
  
Mary saw the aircraft running from the airfield pursued by several more, took in the column of smoke rising from one of the hangars, and shook her head. "Somehow you can tell it's Dave," she said despairingly. "Hold on, pal, here we come!"  
  
Aurora screamed towards the swarm of fighters, guns stuttering. They scattered, trying to evade bursts from the turret guns and each other, and quite a few of them failed.  
  
"Impeccably timed, as always! Thanks you lot!" The fighter rolled in acknowledgement and turned towards home once more. Mary waved in reply, and armed her Mavericks. Quickly tapping her command keyboard, she designated a target for each missile, which were fed into the targeting computer. The ability to target multiple objects had required major upgrading of the software suite, but gave a decided edge in combat. It only worked with self guiding fire-and-forget missiles like the Maverick or Sidewinder, which formed our typical loadout anyhow.  
  
Six streaks of smoke and fire coursed towards the buildings and impacted, blasting them apart. One building was particularly spectacular in its demise; the armoury, which detonated in a dramatic ball of fire. The blastwave hurled the supply zepplin sideways, and parachutes blossomed from it.  
  
"Base, this is Aurora. All primary targets destroyed, engaging secondary targets now, over."  
  
"Acknowledged. We have a couple of escaped prisoners arriving, one of whom is David. The other... well, you'd better wait until you get back. You won't believe me, over and out." Mary shrugged, and started shooting Hydra rockets at tanks.  
  
Asriel dismounted, and winced; he'd gone rigid in what his mother genteely called the dairy air. That snow bike was worse than a horse! He noticed a fighter parked nearby, and a figure approaching him.  
  
"Remember our agreement?"  
  
"Yes. We agreed not to punch each other until we escaped."  
  
"Well, we've both escaped!" Asriel glimpsed a man's forehead moving at great speed, then there was an explosion of stars and pain. "What habened to PUNCHING, you bastard!"  
  
I followed up with a jab to his solar plexus, leaving him doubled up on the ground gasping for breath, and finished off with a good solid kick to his scrotum.  
  
"Hell's bells," Lord Faa exclaimed as he arrived at a run. "You've half-killed him! What'd he done to you?"  
  
"Me? Nothing. Quite a few kids; the worst thing you can imagine. That's Asriel," I explained.  
  
Aurora landed a short distance away, and the others disembarked at a dead run. "We saw what happened," Mary said. "Who is he?"  
  
Asriel chose this moment to stand up. His face was bloodied, but recognisable. "You!" Lyra hissed. There was no warning for what happened next. Her arm blurred, and I dived backwards as her pistol cracked, over and over again. "This is for Roger!" she screamed. There were fifteen shots and nearly as many Dead Man's Clicks before Will gently took the now empty gun from her hand. "It's done," he said gently.  
  
Lord Faa winced. "There should have been a trial," he said. "We've had enough of summary justice. He would have been imprisoned for life, there was no need to..."  
  
"No," Elaine said firmly. "Some monsters shouldn't walk under the living sky. Dave should have put a bullet into him back there."  
  
"Come on," I said. "We're going to need every man or woman on hand on the ground out there. You needn't worry about the nukes, by the way," I added. "The building where they're being stored took a direct hit. They're under a hundred tons of rubble, so some bad loser can't let one off."  
  
The boat jolted from wavetop to wavetop, and I feared for my teeth if this went on for much longer. I gripped my rifle nervously, and hoped I'd live through this.  
  
"Thirty seconds!" somebody yelled. We glanced at each other, each seeing the fear in the other's eyes and hoping it wasn't as obvious in our own. Elaine grinned at me, and I returned the gesture.  
  
Mary nudged Elaine. "I wish you'd just face up to it and snog him," she hissed. "He hasn't spotted it yet, but everyone else has."  
  
"Shut up!" Elaine hissed back, certain that Mary had been overheard. She had; Will was trying not to laugh, and Lyra winked at her.  
  
The boat crunched against snow-covered sand. "GO!" As one, we vaulted over the side, running up the 'beach' at full tilt.  
  
There was very little fire directed at us, with the advance team attracting most of the attention, and the witches drawing a lot of groundfire themselves. There were several small huts scattered at intervals along the beach; lookout posts, I imagine. Elaine and I charged up to one, and simultaneously booted the door. A volley of rounds left the hut at chest height, and I took several of them. I went flying backwards, landing heavily on my back. I had a lopsided but clear view of Elaine letting fly with her shotgun, pumping round after round into the hut's unseen occupants and yelling at the top of her voice.  
  
I sat up, and shook out the flattened bullets from between my sweatshirt and Kevlar vest. Elaine ran over, and I gave her a weary thumbs-up. At this point Elaine decided to take Mary's earlier advice. I won't bore you with the mushy details.  
  
It was about ten minutes before we began taking an interest in the fighting once more. A smoke-blackened, manically grinning Jonathan West was standing over us, clutching a G3A3 assault rifle. His daemon had lost large areas of fur.  
  
"This is better Medal of Honour: Frontline!" he informed us cheerily. "We've taken the airstrip, and we're in a bit of a standoff over by the barracks. Come on, or you'll miss all the fun!" He dashed off.  
  
"Why, oh WHY did we hire that lunatic?" Elaine asked despairingly.  
  
"It was your idea, you tell me," I replied evenly.  
  
"It was a rhetorical question, you berk! Come on, let's go and make sure he doesn't get himself or anyone else killed."  
  
Lyra ducked a rifle shot, which ricocheted off the wall behind her. Kirjava scampered into the Nissen hut, Will not far behind. "It's absolute mayhem out there," he remarked. "I'm not even sure where our lines are or who's shooting at me half the time. God only knows where the others've gone."  
  
One of the Young Guns, the girl Isobel, bullied an obese man in ceremonial robes through the door. "Some Church bigwig," she explained. Her hawk-daemon bit the man's peacock-daemon on the tail, sparking a vicious pecking fight.  
  
"Got a bucket of water handy?" the prisoner asked Lyra wearily. "I'm Sir Charles Sudburgh, the High Chief Pardoner, by the way. And after this is all over you'll be needing men of my profession. The Almighty isn't going to be too pleased about THIS lot, I should say!" Will, who had seen A Knight's Tale the previous weekend and formed an opinion of pardoners in general which Geoffery Chaucer would have sympathised with (try reading the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales), simply glared at him.  
  
The door opened once again, to reveal Mary. She was grimy, her G36 was waving everywhere, and she was smiling broadly. "Boy, if the nuns at the convent could see me right now!" she smirked. "I think we're winning, though nobody can tell friend from foe out there. Elaine took my advice, by the way. I've just been talking to John, who currently can't shoot straight for laughing."  
  
"I'd rather you didn't explain why," Will replied, having a dreadful feeling that he knew why, and not wishing to be proved right. "He caught them spooning by one of those lookout posts on the shore," Mary continued, undeterred. Will cringed. It'd be nice to be wrong occasionally.  
  
"Did you HAVE to tell me that? There are some things you don't want to hear about your mother, you know!" Nobody was paying much attention, Will realised. They were looking out of the window. Will joined them, and beheld parties of soldiers walking out with their hands above their heads.  
  
"We've done it!" he exclaimed. The High Chief Pardoner burst into tears, and Will felt moved to give him a handkerchief.  
  
"We'd never have used those bombs," he informed them once he'd calmed down a bit. "No matter how desperate it got. We aren't THAT bad, you know." This was so utterly ridiculous that everyone broke into laughter, and he burst into tears again.  
  
The next month was truly momentous. With their redoubt destroyed and nowhere to run, the Magisterium was holed below the waterline, and simply gave up. Most Church brass were permitted to go into exile without undue unpleasantness, though those who committed major atrocities were dealt with by hastily convened courts. There was a period of civil disorder in many areas, but this was rapidly cured by the newly established secular regimes. It would take a long while, but we were well on the way to bringing true democracy to this world. I was quite chuffed to have been part of it, despite my early doubts.  
  
It was with some relief, however, that we returned to our own world for a bit.  
  
"So," I said as we transited, "has anybody got any specific destination requests once we drop John and company off? We can probably make the south of France without refuelling, and I am in need of a long, quiet holiday!"  
  
"Ibiza?" Will suggested helpfully.  
  
"I said a QUIET holiday. I'm too old for clubbing and you're too young!"  
  
"Oh yeah, says who?"  
  
"Says me!" Elaine replied, to general mirth. 


	8. Spooks of both varieties

We made a landing at a remote airstrip in Scotland, dropping the Young Guns off, and returned to our new base in deepest darkest Norfolk.  
  
Mary had found an old windmill near a largeish broad out in the sticks, which was in reasonable repair, and had it done up with plumbing and electricity. A prefab barn erected over an enlarged inlet made for a reasonable hangar, and the building itself offered plenty of storage space. Intruders were greeted by a fairly efficient security system; a variety of laser or pressure pad sensors linked to a large selection of nasty explosive devices mounted on walls. Typically they consisted of a few ounces of C4 embedded with glass marbles and roofing nails, and could only be disengaged by remote, using devices kept with our keys. Burglars seemed a bit unlikely this far from civilisation, and I had little regard for the security services, should they come snooping around.  
  
I set us down, and taxied into the 'hangar'. To my surprise and alarm, a man was standing inside. This felt a bit wrong. I went through the post-landing checklist, and opened the side door.  
  
"Can I help you, Mr...?"  
  
"Who I am is of no importance," he replied. "What IS important is that I need to know why a reputable scientist like Dr Malone is flying mysterious aircraft from remote locations like this, and employing explosive burglar alarms."  
  
"Well I need to know why your subordinates are forcing entry into my damn property!" Mary retorted hotly. "Let's see a search warrant, before I call the REAL cops!"  
  
"But they'd want to examine the property, wouldn't they? I doubt they'd like what they saw," our mysterious houseguest replied smugly. He shut up rather quickly as two pistols were levelled at his head.  
  
"On second thoughts, I might not bother with the police at all, though I imagine they'd relish a chance to bang up a spook."  
  
"Actually, I'm from the Home Office," he explained. I just laughed. I'd heard THAT one before, on the television!  
  
"What the hell's going on?" Elaine hissed behind us.  
  
"You know those 'enemies' of yours, Ellie? There's one of them standing in the hangar making smartarse remarks," I explained. "Think we ought to scrag him?"  
  
"Yeah, why not?" She exited the aircraft at some speed, and punched the man in the mouth. "You know, they don't seem as frightening, now," she remarked, as he went down.  
  
"P'raps that's 'cause you've got a fully automatic shotgun by the door, a handgun in your belt and a fast, heavily armed aeroplane to make a getaway in," I suggested. "Which if you'll take my advice we'll do right now, hmm?" Men in combat fatigues waving MP5s were running towards us, only to find themselves facing the dorsal turret at full bore, plus accurate bursts of fire from Lyra's G36. They dived for cover, and returned fire. I legged it for the cockpit, and began the engine start sequence whilst using the bow and stern thrusters to turn us on our own length. Will kept up steady suppressing fire until I got us in the air on full afterburners, and hastily deployed all other weapons systems.  
  
"There goes a nice little base of operations," Mary grumbled from the copilot's seat, as she switched radar and IR scanners to her station. "At least we didn't lose anything irreplacable."  
  
"Yeah," I replied. "Replacing our munitions and fuel stores is going to cost a bloody fortune, though, even if we can find a new home base."  
  
"Money's hardly a major issue. Corus pay the money for this alloy into four accounts in Zurich, and they can't trace it after that behind the Swiss banking code. They probably haven't even realised it was me who sold the alloy to Corus." Part of the agreement with Corus was that they would take total credit in exchange for a significant percentage of all sales. Burying the resulting missing cash in the paperwork wasn't difficult, and probably not strictly illegal; remind me to check that with Frank once he gets out of jail. Each of these accounts held nearly two million US dollars already, so we weren't in serious trouble yet, financially speaking.  
  
Suddenly, the Threat Warning Reciever began howling. Four separate aircraft had just locked onto us, and my HUD began flashing with information. Being good friends with a particle and electromagnetic physicist had given me the capability to discren the type of missile locked on, and adjust my strategy accordingly. Currently I was facing three self guided missiles and one remote guided, which both presented specific difficulties. Chaff -radar reflective tinfoil confetti- was most effective against radar transmitters close up, rather than ones being steered from a guidance system fifty miles away. ECM, throwing out false radar images, was more effective for the latter type but both countermeasures against both types were still very literally a hit-or-miss affair.  
  
One thing was in our favour; radar-locking missiles are extremely unwieldy at close range, and all four aircraft were approaching from one direction. I immediately swung around towards them, engaging ECM. Even if they managed to launch, missiles are useless in head-to-head engagements, so it was down to guns and heat-seekers. If anything we'd then have the advantage, with turrets covering all angles and significantly greater armour plating, and they'd have to be careful with their heat-seekers. We wouldn't.  
  
The flight commander observed this with some alarm, and hastily switched to Sidewinders. "Red Leader to Red section, switch to 'Winders or guns. Looks like this one's going to get up close and personal!"  
  
She heard a trio of acknowlegements in a distant way, and began concentrating on the fight. The big aircraft, which was ridiculously fast for its size with only two engines, was coming in fast.Four streaks of fire and smoke whizzed out from beneath its wings, each heading for one fighter. "How did he do that?" her backseater wondered, as they narrowly avoided being hit. Red Three was less fortunate, being blown apart with enough force to nearly flip Red Leader's Tornado over. "Okay, pal, let's see just how good you really are..." she said to herself, switching to guns. The big seaplane fired a short burst from its forward guns, perforating Red Four's wing. The Tornado responded with a volley of 20mm cannon fire which starred the seaplane's forward windshield but didn't penetrate. The pilot zoomed upwards, and the plane hung in the air as it backflipped like a performing dolphin, then dived earthwards.  
  
"That thing just did a bloody HAMMERSTALL!" yelled one pilot. "Planes that size don't DO shit like that!"  
  
"Shut up and concentrate!" Red Leader snapped, dodging a burst from the ventral gun. The plane began to sideslip, but suddenly the pilot -who was clearly either drunk or crazy- pulled back on the stick, causing the plane to SLIDE sideways. Keep that up for more than a second or two and he'd end up in a flat spin or rip his wings off, but all three Tornadoes were forced to reasess their angle of attack.  
  
Suddenly, the plane retracted all turrets and engaged afterburners. The fighters tried to lock on with AMRAAMs or AIM-7 Sparrows, but suddenly something utterly impossible happened. There was a brilliant white flash, and a shockwave that caused Red Four's wing to completely collapse, forcing the pilot to eject. When Red Leader next took an interest in things, the plane had vanished.  
  
"What the holy howling bejesus just HAPPENED?" asked her backseater. "That looked like a warp drive effect off Star Trek."  
  
"I have no idea. I imagine that MI5 might have an idea, but the chances are they won't be overly inclined to tell us. Now let's get back to base and get a very large drink, and never, ever talk about this again."  
  
"Amen, skipper."  
  
"Haha! Bet they're scratching their heads over THAT!" I laughed, decreasing speed and peering at the cracks in the windscreen. "Damn. That's yet another bloody bill. This is becoming a really expensive day!"  
  
"Dave?" said Elaine rather shakily. "You know when we suddenly went sort of SIDEWAYS...?"  
  
"I don't think I'd better explain whilst we're still flying," I replied. "I'll tell you about it later."  
  
"Yeah, I guess you're right. But BEFORE you try it again, okay?"  
  
"Promise," I replied. "Now where are we?"  
  
The cityscape I could see below us was quite attractive, with Mediterranian architecture and beautiful, unspoilt beaches. The only problem was that there appeared to be no people. I flew slightly lower, and realised what was wrong.  
  
Spectres. We'd wound up in bloody Cittigaze.  
  
"Great, just great," I grumbled. "How many sorts of bloody spook am I going to have to deal with today?"  
  
"I've got an idea," Mary informed me. Before I could object, she had the deckplate giving access to the Drive's innards open, and was burrowing in with a toolkit from her back pocket. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I asked.  
  
"I designed the thing, remember."  
  
"That wasn't what I asked."  
  
"Look, just trust me on this one, okay? If it doesn't work put us down out in the bay, and I'll patch the Drive up again and we'll be on our way. Dead easy."  
  
"That depends," Will chipped in. "If you're doing what I think you're doing then it'll probably work, but if this goes wrong chances are it'll go VERY wrong, you know?"  
  
"Well, here goes nothing, then. Dave, make a shallow attack run over the city area and keep your thumb on the Drive button. We're going ghostbusting!"  
  
I complied, and saw a sort of shimmer fire out from the nosecone, and spread out across the city. When it touched the Spectres, they dissolved.  
  
"When there's somethin' strange/In your neighbourhood," I sang. "Who ya gonna call?" I got no further on account of Kirjava 'accidentally' knocking a lighted cigarette out of the ashtray and into my lap. Whether my screams and curses as some of my favourite bits of anatomy began to smoulder were more tuneful is a matter of opinion. I certainly don't think my singing is so bad that she had to try and set fire to my pubic hair. Elaine still swears that it is, threatening me with divorce if I ever attempt it now.  
  
"Stupid damn cat!" I raged. "My singing isn't THAT bad! What the hell are you trying to do?" Mary had to take over control before I crashed into the sea. Everyone else was shaking with laughter.  
  
We made several more runs, until the city was completely free of Spectres. Once we had made quite sure, I set us down near the beach. Surprised kids were lining the waterfront, and the older ones were cheering. An older girl approached, and shouted something about saviours, and suddenly they were all cheering.  
  
"Erm," I said worriedly. Will groaned.  
  
"I'm not sure I want to see what hanging around is going to do to Mary's ego," he remarked.  
  
"Come back in a couple of months," she advised him. "I'm going to spend a little while sorting things out here, try and get into contact with some survivors and organise a proper counterstrike against these things."  
  
"We can hold out a day or two," I said, "and you're going to need Aurora if you want to find anyone still alive and over the age of eleven, you know." She grinned, and nodded.  
  
In the event, once Mary had produced a blueprint of the modified Drive with the aid of her PC and a printer, we weren't really needed. A troop of horsemen rode up to us, and their leader introduced himself as the head of a tribe of some sort.  
  
"Can you build this thing?" I asked.  
  
"Yes, with what we can salvage from the city. It'll take time, but soon we'll be ready to use it," he grinned. "If you can keep the city clear for a few hours we can get what we need."  
  
"No problem," I replied. "Then once we've done that, we are going on that long quiet holiday I promised us, right you lot?"  
  
***  
  
There isn't much more to tell, now. We're on the move a lot of the time, returning intermittently to our own worlds but mostly exploring new ones. There's only about thirty or forty different ones which we can access; the World of the Dead seems to act as a kind of hub, with chains of worlds branching out, which can be accessed via the microfissures. It's still a lifetime's worth of study.  
  
I say 'we', but it's not all of us, now. Will joined the Fleet Air Arm, like his stepfather, and Lyra followed him. They're both pilots in the same squadron, tipped to be flying off HMS Cunningham, Britain's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. That just left the three of us except when one or both of them was on leave, but we do alright. Elaine can fly as well, now, and she's at least as good as Mary or me.  
  
I married Elaine a couple of years after the whole thing, and I hope John approves. Mary is still looking, and I shouldn't think it'll be too long. Frank was acquitted but totally ruined the firm's reputation, largely through his own stupidity, and is now a manager for a small passenger airline. We run into each other occasionally, and neither of us resents the actions of the other.  
  
The Magisterium went quietly, though resistance continued in some areas for many months. If we've altogether heard the last of certain top Church brass I'll be extremely surprised, but I doubt they'll achieve much against what's replaced them.  
  
The Young Guns are making a healthy living as a 'Personnel Retrieval Service', breaking people out of jail for cash, and reducing prison overpopulation far more effectively than any government initiative. Speaking of governments, they've got MI5 on their backs, now. They did a US death row in Texas, and the Yanks went absolutely bonkers. Fair play to 'em, I say!  
  
I won't say this is the end of the story, not by a long way. With so many worlds out there, just about anything could happen...  
  
#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~#  
  
Teaser for upcoming sequel, 'The Twisted Cross':  
  
We completed the transition to this world, one we hadn't visited before, and I discovered that we were over Berlin, pretty much where we'd been before. But something was terribly, appallingly wrong.  
  
I could see a huge copy of the Arc d'Triumphe, as big as a dozen buildings, straddling the city. There was a great dome, twice the size of any football stadium in the world, directly ahead of me. I glanced down at the novel on the copilot's seat, Fatherland by Robert Harris. I realised I was seeing the Berlin that it described; a Berlin that -in my world, at least- existed only in the mind and plans of Albert Speer, Hitler's pet architect.   
  
"Holy mother of God," Mary breathed. She tried the radios, seeking commercial frequencies. As she worked, Will tugged at my sleeve. "Look," he told me. I saw that there was a parade, and somebody was burning a Star of David. I felt sick to the very pit of my stomach.  
  
"The radio says something about... Final Solution Day," Mary half-whispered, her voice close to cracking with... what? Horror, fear, anger? Maybe all of them. Certainly all of those were filling my mind.  
  
I closed my eyes, trying to make it all go away, and failed. Through the clouds of thought came a memory, pin-sharp and poignant. My grandfather, the number tattooed on his wrist and a terrible sadness in his eyes, telling me about what he'd seen. What had been done to him.  
  
I felt millions of men, women and children speak to me through the ages, imploring me to seek justice.  
  
And by God, seek it I would. 


	9. DVD BONUS MATERIAL

DELETED AND ALTERNATE SCENES: DVD ONLY!  
  
  
  
The following is a series of slightly modified scenes and incidents briefly alluded to in the main story that didn't make the final cut, a la most new DVDs. They are nothing more than the result of extreme boredom, and in no particular chronological order. First up, the pivotal moment of Chapter 3 given a slight facelift...  
  
Lyra saw the sky, brilliantly illuminated by the Northern Lights. A great silver birdlike object screamed across her vision with a roar like a thousand fires. She looked to her left, and saw...  
  
"Will!" she shouted. He smiled that smile of his, and walked over to her. "See you soon," he said, and-  
  
Lyra sat up in bed, groggily trying to guess at the implications of what she'd seen. She happened to glance at the clock; 11:30. Putting thoughts of her dream behind her, she leapt from bed and dragged on her clothes. This was one appointment she did NOT plan on being late for.  
  
Once she made it to the garden, Lyra pondered the implications of her dream. Pan, needless to say, was sceptical. "Your mind's playing tricks with you, he said. "You spend too much time pining for him."  
  
"I've managed without you before," said Lyra in an ice-cold tone, "and I can manage without you again. So just watch what you say about how I act over Will, right?" Her daemon was not one to make an issue of something under such circumstances, and wisely shut up. He was actually just as bad, but less obviously so.  
  
"I wonder if he made it, this year?" Lyra murmured to herself.  
  
Somehow, she had managed to sleep through our somewhat dramatic arrival. Will certainly was going to make it, and in style!  
  
Will raced through the narrow sidestreets, wishing he could spare the breath to curse. Police whistles sounded constantly, and aside from the additional cops they brought running they were beginning to grate on his nerves. Will didn't dare shoot at them, for that would entail slowing down, and with forty-odd cops and fifteen bullets that would turn out rather badly.  
  
His slight lead enabled him to round a corner ahead of the pursuit, and duck down a side alley. Dave and his mother obligingly kept straight on, drawing pursuit, but Will didn't realise until some time later.  
  
The alley ended in a wall. "Damn!" he gasped. Kirjava began scrambling up the conveniently stacked dustbins at the end. "Oh, God! Let me get my breath back!" he pleaded, still wheezing.  
  
"There's no time! Come ON!"  
  
Cursing Kirjava, the local police and his own wretched luck, Will complied. He landed awkwardly on the other side, and lay spreadeagled on the grass for a few seconds, gulping lungfuls of air. Vaguely, he realised that he was in THAT part of the gardens, and the person sitting on THAT bench was... Will drew on reserves of energy he hadn't known existed, and crept carefully to the bench, before sitting in his usual place.  
  
Lyra sat on the bench, her eyes closed, concentrating as hard as she could. //Come on, Will! Where are you?// Her concentration was shattered by a person sitting down gently beside her. She opened her eyes, trying to frame a suitable remark, but was unable to say a word. The hand that gently grasped hers had only three fingers! She looked up into a pair of familiar hazel eyes.  
  
Despite having been shot at, hurled in the river and chased across half of Oxford, Will could still find the time to be cool. "I'm not late, am I?" he said with a broad grin, theatrically glancing at his watch.  
  
"Will? It's really you?" He was taller, and looked far older than he was. The RAF-issue flight suit and pistol holstered at his hip undoubtedly added to this effect, but underneath he was recognisably the same boy she had last seen two years ago this very day.  
  
"Oh, yes."  
  
"But how? You didn't use the Knife, did you?"  
  
"I don't need it any more," he said, cutting off further questions with a kiss.  
  
Now, if anybody can think of a less opportune moment for Elaine and myself to turn up, let me know. We'd realised what had happened after shaking off pursuit, and backtracked until we found a likely-looking turnoff. Elaine hoisted herself up without breaking a sweat.  
  
"Why can't we use the damn gate?" I grunted as I struggled over the wall after her. "I'm not BUILT for this Krypton Factor stuff!" Actually I felt more like a contestant on Takeshi's Castle. If I'd been expecting sympathy -and after several years knowing Elaine I damn well shouldn't have been- I was to be disappointed.  
  
"Stop moaning and get over the bloody wall," Elaine ordered, as she gracefully swung a leg over and dropped. I was privleged to see Will's face as his mother appeared right as he was catching up a bit with the girl he hadn't seen for two years. I mean, if that was you, or your boyfriend? Trust me, I've been there in worse circumstances; at least Will had all his clothes on.  
  
"Oh, er, hi Mum," he said, going bright red. I earned his perpeptual gratitude by landing in a rose bush at about this point, breaking the awkward silence and distracting his mother long enough for Will to withdraw his hands.  
  
"So this is Lyra, then," Elaine said in the special sort of interested-yet-mildly-alarmed voice that parents use when meeting their offspring's paramour. "It's nice to meet you at last."  
  
Kirjava shrugged, insofar as a cat can. "Humans," she said to Pan in a voice laden with exasperation.  
  
Lyra rose to the occasion magnificently. "It's nice to meet you too, Mrs Parry," she said politely.  
  
"Oh, please call me Elaine. You'll find me less disturbed than Will's description of me the last time you met, I hope."  
  
"You didn't boss me about as much when you were still slightly mad," I remarked, disentangling myself from the bush with some difficulty. Mother-son relations took a turn for the worse when Will failed to hide his snigger.  
  
Will gave Lyra an apologetic smile. "I think your parents were less embarassing," he said as quietly as he could.  
  
"Oh yeah?"  
  
"Look, you lot, this is all very nice but can we think about evading the law rather than introductions?" I said. "I'm Dave, by the way."  
  
The gate creaked open, causing all of us to dive for cover. An elderly and distinguished-looking man in the robes of a senior don walked in, accompanied by a constable.  
  
"Well, I don't see any criminals in here," the older man remarked with an annoyed edge to his voice.  
  
"Hmmm," the constable said thoughtfully. I don't doubt your word, sir, but we've looked everywhere else. I suppose they could have got back over the wall and doubled back on themselves. Thank you for your help," and the constable walked off.  
  
"That's a master of one of the colleges," Elaine whispered. "Jordan, I think." She and John had been invited to dinner with the high and mighty of Oxbridge quite a few times, so I suppose she'd know. The closest I've come is a Combined Services/Oxford First XVI rugby match, which we won!  
  
The Master of Jordan entered the garden. "Lyra?" he said hesitantly. "Are you in here? I've learned something that may interest you." She emerged carefully.  
  
"The aircraft that landed on the river earlier- you did hear that? Oh, well anyway," he said in a voice containing more excitement than his dignity would normally allow. "The authrorities believe that-,"  
  
"It's from another world?" I suggested, keeping my Browning aimed squarely at his chest as I moved out from behind a bush.  
  
"Oh! You've met them, then," he said. "You can put away your weapon, my good man, I am no threat." I gradually lowered the pistol, but didn't holster it. I was getting to be a little paranoid after the morning I'd had.  
  
"The whole interdimensionnal travel thing isn't popular with the Magisterium," Lyra explained. "Goes right against the Good Book, and my father didn't help much." I suppose not; attempting a coup d'etat against God would tend to make a man unpopular with the Church. I'll say this for Lord Asriel, though; he might have been nine parts bonkers, but he thought big.  
  
"So they decide to kill us," I said quietly. I was NOT impressed with this particular world's government.  
  
"Sadly yes. But tell me, how exactly does your travel mechanism function?"  
  
"EM radiation at high frequency and a gradually broadening wavelength holds a microfissure open long enough to admit the Aurora Borealis travelling at twice the speed of sound," Elaine explained. "Apparently Lord Asriel used the same basic principle, but our system is much less crude and has only a short-term effect."  
  
"We can fly between worlds as easily as flying between countries," I added. "No contamination, no soul-sucking ghost thingies, and no messy great holes lying around in the fabric of reality."  
  
"I see," he replied. "Much as I'd like to learn more, I fear that it would be dangerous for you to remain here."  
  
I nodded my agreement. "I suppose we'd better try and link up with Mary, wherever the hell she wound up." Lyra reached into her studenty leather satchel and produced the althieometer with a flourish. "I can read it again now, sort of," she explained. "Now..." there was a short interlude. "Got it! She's in the Fens, quite near a gyptian town."  
  
"We can't hitch a ride on a boat without endangering others," Elaine said firmly. "If we get a train as far as Norwich we'll only be a day or so away from her."  
  
"Right," I said, and then turned to Lyra. "Coming? Yeah, I know, silly question. Well, if that little gadget of yours is all it's cracked up to be we need you along anyhow, I reckon."  
  
Next, the Unfortunate Incident With VTOL, which Elaine rather scathingly mentions in passing in the same chapter.  
  
Vertical takeoff was not a successful design feature, as our earliest flight test proved. No vectored-thrust engine could propel us to Mach 2; well, the VTOL version of the new F22 Raptor's engine might, but getting hold of a pair of THEM would cost more than the rest of the plane combined. So, in true DIY fashion, I modified an existing engine.  
  
The only difficult bit was the movable nozzle itself. A valve system to direct the exhaust would be a simple task for any competent plumber -and I don't mean the service jargon for an aircraft mechanic- but the heat and pressure generated by the engines, huge Rolls-Royce turbines intended for powering Tornado GR1 fighters, was immense. I was pretty sure the setup I designed would stand up OK.  
  
The first vertical flight test arrived, with Aurora riding the swell a mile off the coast of Scotland. The others were watching from our Zodiac inflatable, whilst the crew of the freighter that had hauled Aurora up this far stood by the boats. Elaine had insisted on the latter; nice to know she had such faith in me, wasn't it?  
  
"OK," I said through my oxygen mask, "VTOL mode on, throttling up." Slowly, wobblingly, Aurora left the 'deck' and rose to about sixty feet. Then the starboard exhaust nozzle fractured, and the engine thrust in the direction nature intended. There was a flash, a loud bang and a shower of metal bits. My right wing dipped alarmingly, and if I hadn't immediately switched over to normal flight Aurora would have flipped over. A Harrier prototype did the same in tests, and the pilot had to eject before his aircraft inverted and smashed into the ground.  
  
Just as I was silently congratulating myself for being polite to the man who tried to give me a copy of the Watchtower, the freighter's radio antenna loomed in front of me. Training, experience and reflexes took over, and I rammed the stick over to the right and hauled it back. The turn almost worked, though G-force nearly collapsed my lungs, but the tail wheel smashed the mast.  
  
"Dave! Are you alright?" Mary screamed at me.  
  
"I'm still alive, I think. Damn thrust nozzle cracked up on me; it just wasn't up to the heat. Got my bloody sums wrong, by the look of it."  
  
"I think that test was a regrettable failure," Elaine observed sourly. "The skipper of that ship says he wants to keelhaul you, by the way."  
  
"Tell him to put a new radio mast on expenses," I replied.  
  
"It's not the mast he's bothered about, it's you making him spill scalding tea all over his crotch!"  
  
Just to make matters worse, I had to share a relatively small boat for three days with the man who poured painfully hot liquid over his nads and blamed me.  
  
Now, a short scene in Mary's lab.  
  
Mary looked over the readouts once again, and thoughtfully tapped her teeth with a biro. A burst of EM radiation certainly seemed to affect those 'stitches' as Will referred to them. She picked up the spyglass, and watched as another burst hit the fissure, the radiation visible as a shimmer effect in the pattern of Dust. The fissure glowed slightly, but there seemed to be no other effect... then it hit her. The radiation stopped at the fissure, or at least wasn't visible afterwards. "Of course!"  
  
An inspiration hit her. Mary checked the power reserves, and discerned that she had enough for five seconds at maximum power. Firing another burst, she gradually twisted the dial increasing wavelength. The fissure widened, enlarged, and... opened!  
  
"Yes," Mary breathed. The fissure snapped shut as the batteries depleted. There was a loud crash behind her, and Mary looked around and saw Will standing in the doorway, with a broken mug and spilt coffee on the floor in front of him and his mouth open.  
  
"Did you just do what I think I saw you do?"  
  
"I'm pretty sure you did," Mary replied. "We've done it, Will."  
  
Will was on the point of cheering and bursting into tears both at once. "Once I fine-tune things a bit, we'll be able to test this thing properly. No wonder it's taken me so long," she mused. "I thought something in the human-daemon connection made the difference, but that's basically neuro-electrical energy; the alpha waves. Asriel just hit on a convenient power source."  
  
Mary reached into a drawer, and brought out a half-bottle of champagne and two glasses. She filled them, and gave one to Will.  
  
"To new worlds, and old friends!" Their glasses clinked together. "Right, now go and get a cloth before that coffee stains the carpet!"  
  
Last of all before I start on Chapter 5, the misunderstanding over Will, firearms, and his mum's attitude.  
  
I was a bit nervous about the situation in which I found myself. Will was practicing with a handgun in the RAF training school range, where I'd got him in on the pretext of a short visit to Uncle Dave's old buddies. He fired five rapid shots from the two-handed Weaver stance, and raised his goggles to look at the target through a sighting scope.  
  
"Three nines, two tens, but none in the X ring," he reported. "Not bad, but hardly championship level."  
  
"You'll do, lad," I replied. "Just so long as you can hit a man before he hits you, and your mother doesn't get to hear about this!" We both shared a (wholly erroneous) mental picture of Elaine's reaction, and winced. My mobile phone began to ring. It was Elaine.  
  
"Hello?" I said slowly, trying not to sound as guilty as I felt.  
  
"Hi Dave. I've just had a word with Mary, and I need to speak to you about Will's role if we find ourselves in a firefight." Gulp! "Go on," I said cautiously.  
  
"Why aren't you training him with guns like the rest of us? If he finds himself in such a situation he should be given the skills and the means to defend himself..." Will fired another five rounds, looked, and cheered.  
  
"Yes! Two right in the X ring! I'm getting better at this!"  
  
"Dave, please don't tell me you thought I'd go beserk if you taught Will how to use a weapon, and you've been teaching him in secret." Elaine sounded slightly strained.  
  
"Actually, it was Will who suggested training on the quiet," I replied.  
  
"I'm going to throttle the pair of you!" Elaine shouted, though you could hear the barely restrained laughter. In the background I could hear Mary giggling helplessly; she hadn't been in on all this.  
  
"Look," I protested, "how was I supposed to expect you to react?"  
  
"I DID spend six months in a mental hospital because I was suffering from paranoid delusions," Elaine reminded me, now unable to suppress her mirth.  
  
"And they cured you."  
  
"No, I just stopped complaining about it. Will had to send me into hiding and kill somebody, then go on the run, remember?" I hung up, and gently banged my head against a wall.  
  
"She's on to us, isn't she," Will groaned.  
  
"No, worse. She called to lecture me about not training you with guns, because you'd be in the same danger as everyone else if we got shot at." This was basically the defence I had planned if we were ever rumbled. I could weep!  
  
Well, that's all for now, everyone. It isn't strictly neccessary to read this chapter, but if you think this is a good idea I'll carry on. This chapter may get longer if I come up with any more ideas, or get stuck with the main story, or both. Bye for now,  
  
JJ.  
  
Opening Credits  
  
I was a little bit stuck after Chapter 6, so I decided to have a go at cobbling together an opening credits sequence, as this is the sort of ludicrous pastiche that usually forms TV spinoff plots. I freely admit that they read like a bit of a ripoff of the opening credits from Firefly, but I don't care.  
  
BGM: XTM feat. Anya, 'Fly On The Wings Of Love'.  
  
Opener: Aurora in blueprint form, fade to constructed aircraft waiting in hangar. Crew approaching from behind camera POV. Cut to Aurora in the air, filmed from chase plane some distance away, at full afterburner. Nosecone glows, Roughly spherical area of brilliant white light appears, Aurora flys through and portal vanishes with a large shockwave which rattles camera aircraft.  
  
Shots of each crewmember in various 'typical' poses- flight station, combat with small arms, and static 'relaxed'; use scenes from main episode- with names of actors overlaid. (Author's note: you may wish to insert the names of the actors cast in the forthcoming film, God forbid it actually be made. I'd like the guy who plays Malcom in Enterprise to be Dave.)  
  
Additional credits overlaid with scenes from 'pilot episode': Thames landing, Dave getting an elbow in the nuts, combat with zepplin force over Norfolk.  
  
Finale: Aurora flying towards camera, background of large explosion, VERY rapidly cut to view of Aurora flying in opposite direction. Series title appears on screen. Fade to black.  
  
Now, probably the final extra as the story is drawing to something of a close. I reckon I made a bit of a hash of Xanthania's bit, so I'm going to have another go here.  
  
She flew through a space that cannot be truly described, for it was beyond the comprehension of mortal man. Xanthania could see and observe anything in any world from this place, which was as close to omnicognisance as angels got.  
  
Xanthania was troubled, and checked upon Lyra once again. She was recovering, but still greatly missing her love. Should she check upon Will? No, he would resent her doing so. Time might heal them, but if it did not... Xanthania decided that after one more year she would give Lyra a few pointers on alternative methods of travel between worlds.  
  
Her musings were disrupted by a sudden tremor in the fabric of the universe, what George Lucas would call the Force. "A portal," she said to herself.  
  
Another angel appeared beside her. Insofar as angels breathe, he appeared somewhat breathless, as if he had just been running very fast. "You felt it too?" he asked.  
  
"Yes. What was it? The Knife?"  
  
"No, it could not have been. Those who watch for Spectres observed none being created in any of the worlds. And the portal was different, somehow. It was not fixed, like those that were cut by the Knife. It sprang closed within moments."  
  
Xanthania was, to put it mildly, surprised.  
  
"We must investigate this more closely," she said after a time. Can you trace this phenomenon?"  
  
"The next time it occurs we shall be able to pinpoint it."  
  
"Good. Those responsible must be warned of the dangers involved."  
  
The second time, Xanthania and another angel were in a position to observe. The travel device was built into a great aircraft, which was equipped with such advanced technology that it must surely have come from Will Parry's world. It was also heavily armed, and the Magisterium's determination to destroy it had backfired significantly, and it was now apparently embroiled in the revolution. As the two angels watched, it despatched several zepplins and fighters with weapons that were outside anything ever created in this world. It landed, badly damaged but victorious.  
  
The angels stayed in the background, observing as closely as they could without being seen themselves. They were able to follow the aircraft as it lifted off and apparently prepared to return to its own world for a short time.  
  
"Look! Look at the Dust!" the second, junior angel exclaimed. The Dust was pushed aside as the aircraft opened a fissure, and none escaped. "It is completely safe. There is no danger of the star sickness," the other angel mused. There were implications to this that were not lost upon Xanthania.  
  
Whoever had created this technology had put a great deal of thought into the problem of Dust. And how many people truly understood the issue? Exactly two, one of whom had a vested interest in being in this particular world.  
  
She followed the aircraft through the fissure, watching as it slowed and turned for home.  
  
She took up a creditable formation beside it, and rendered herself visible. The reaction she got was mixed; the pilot screamed slightly and nearly stalled his aircraft. Another member of the crew spilled scalding coffee in her lap, but the remaining three simply waved.  
  
"What the HELL is THAT!"  
  
"Exactly what it looks like," one of the crew, a girl, replied.  
  
"And what it looks like is what permanently turned me away from hard drugs!" Xanthania thought this was quite amusing.  
  
Will raised his helmet visor, and grinned.  
  
"I bet you thought we'd just sit around moping," he said. "Am I right?"  
  
"I forsaw that you would try to find a way to be together. I had, however, failed to anticipate that you would succeed."  
  
"For a semi-divine being, that was pretty daft then, wasn't it?" Lyra replied.  
  
"Well, nobody is perfect," Xanthania said defensively, but decided that Lyra was joking. "How exactly does this machine work?"  
  
"Electromagnetic waves that force a fissure open AND deflect Dust away from it; we got lucky with that last part, Dust had me kind of stuck there," Mary explained. "It snaps shut as soon as we deactivate what I modestly call the Malone Drive. Clever stuff, huh?"  
  
"Indeed. There seem to be no Spectres created by this process, as well."  
  
"Phew. I'm still working on a way to use the Drive against them." Xanthania turned to Will and Lyra.  
  
"It is clear that I was wrong about you, my children," she said. "For a long while I have regretted separating you, and wondered if I should not attempt to bring you together. I am glad that I was not needed, and I wish you well." With that, she disappeared into a fissure like the Starship Enterprise going to warp.  
  
"That has to be the weirdest thing that ever happened to me whilst I was in a legal state of mind," I said at length. 


End file.
